Growing Pains
by avesjohn
Summary: Max investigates KAOS' involvement in a high school teacher's plant growth formula, and along the way, meets his new partner. Numerous students and their intertwining lives complicate matters, and everyone ends up with more than they bargained for.
1. The Teacher's Assistant

_Tuesday, September 2, 2008_

The first day of the school year was always full of surprises. It didn't matter who you were or where you were from, whether you were a seedling kindergartner or a blooming high schooler, or an overripe graduate schooler: on campus that day, when you found who was in your class(es), you always ended up surprised, for better or worse.

Or both, as Richard Candler was soon to find out. He was a 14-year-old freshman at Crescenta Valley High School, the central learning facility for teenagers in La Crescenta, a small town near Los Angeles. Dressed in a blue tee and denim jeans, his otherwise appealing looks were impeded only by his incredibly messy brown hair. Rick always insisted on keeping his hair bedraggled because, as per his dictum, "an adventurous man needs adventurous hair."

This dictum stood in stark contrast to the beliefs of the girl holding his hand as they walked through the halls. Iris Greene was everything Rick wasn't, and that's exactly why they were together. She had uniquely colored hair that began as typical brunette at the top of her head and segued into an orangey golden-brown at the end. The same age as Rick, she was wearing a purple T-shirt and tan slacks, and like him was walking to what would be their fourth period this year, biology with Mr. Katten.

They stopped and looked at the room number on the side of the door. _2202: Mr. Katten._

"I guess this is it," Rick shrugged, turning the handle. He opened the door, and he and Iris walked in together, then stood in place briefly, looking for seats.

"There's two spots over there," Iris said, pointing to two adjacent seats by the classroom windows.

"Yeah," Rick said, "but why walk all the way over _there_ when we can just sit _here_?" He placed his free hand on the back of one of a pair of seats sitting right there in front of them.

"The back of the room, Rick?" Iris asked, pulling her hand out of Rick's. She turned to look at him face-to-face and added, "You _never_ want to sit in the back of the room!"

"New school, new things," Rick nodded. He swung himself into one of the seats and smiled, waiting for his girl to come sit down with him.

"Why not?" Iris said after a few seconds of thinking it over. The two of them then pressed their backs against the chairs and studied their classmates. About a third were people they already knew, another third were ones they probably already knew but for whatever reason couldn't quite locate in their memory banks, and the final third were totally new, at least to this couple. Iris returned her gaze to Rick and challenged, "Okay, seriously, why the back of the room?"

Rick kneeled in close to her and whispered in her ear, "_So we can be alone_."

Iris pushed him away from her playfully. "I don't think we need to worry about that, Rick."

He pushed her shoulder as she had just done to him. "Come on…you know people watch us."

"Spies?" Iris giggled. "You think people _spy_ on us?"

"Well, yeah!" Rick said. After a swift grab of her shoulder and the kneeling in towards each other that followed, Rick brought out his hand and described the situation. "How many boys and girls have relationships as strong as ours at this age? Honestly? They're jealous, Iris. Every guy in this room wants a piece of action, and so does every girl. To have what _we_ have makes us special, which through their eyes means we are _gods_." Quickly, he looked at her, their noses almost touching. "Well…a god and a goddess."

Iris grabbed his shirt collar and pulled, causing their noses to make contact. "You're joking," she said. "They don't _idolize_ us. If they did, we'd know. _You_ just have an overly high opinion of yourself."

"I'm obnoxious," Rick replied with a grin. "You know that."

The bell rang. They pulled away from each other's faces and looked to the front of the classroom, where their blond, bespectacled, fifty-something mustached teacher was picking up a book and a pencil, presumably to take attendance.

Then there was the shuffling of feet heard. A dark-haired man, somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties and dressed in a trench coat, stepped into the room with a rapid opening and closing of the door. He quickly glanced at everyone in the room, his eyes narrowed suspiciously, and he somersaulted over to Mr. Katten; finally, he jumped up and rested his arm on the teacher's shoulder.

"So, freshman," Katten began, neglecting to do anything about the man whose arm was on his shoulder. "Class of 2012."

"I'm a sophomore, actually," a boy in the center of the room offered.

"Then you're the exception," the teacher replied. He pulled out his pencil and began calling out names. "Josh Arbuckle?"

"Here," the boy from seconds before answered.

Katten went down the list while Rick and Iris whispered about the man in the trench coat.

"_Who is that guy?_" Iris said.

"_How the hell should I know?_" Rick replied.

"_Why do you think he's in a trench coat?_"

"_How the hell should I know?_"

"Richard Candler?" Katten shouted.

"Call me Rick or else!" Rick hollered back to him.

"_It's not even cold!_" Iris continued, commenting on the man's attire. "_This is Southern California!_"

"_Maybe his job requires him to wear it._"

"_What kind of job would—_"

Katten interrupted them again, calling: "Iris Greene?"

"Here," Iris responded. Returning to Rick, she said, "_What kind of job would require him to wear a trench coat?_"

"_Maybe he works for a trench coat factory_," Rick said, glancing at the character.

"_Then what's he doing here?_"

"_How the hell should I now?_"

Their conversation extended for another minute or so, without producing any real answers, before Katten called everyone in the class to his attention.

"Hello, I'm Mr. Katten, and I'm going to be your biology teacher this year."

Rick immediately raised his hand. "Are you required to tell us that by law, or are you just saying it?"

"I'm just saying it."

"Congratulations. You've officially become more boring to me."

"Now," Katten said, ignoring Rick, "I don't just teach biology. I also teach chemistry, in first, third, and sixth period. Who knows? You guys just might get me again in a couple years," he beamed at them.

"I'm crossing my fingers," Rick said, turning to Iris and showing her his crossed fingers, "hoping for the exact opposite."

"Some of you may have heard about a hobby of mine. You see, I'm an amateur inventor. Nothing has been real successful yet, but if you try and never give up…who knows? You just might get famous."

"Yawn," Rick said. "Losing interest over here!"

"This will be my in-class assistant for an indefinite period of time," Katten said, presenting the trench-coated man to his students. "His name is Max, and he'll be grading your papers, looking over your work in the class, and all that jazz."

"Allow me!" the man said. He claimed front and center and declared to the audience, "I am Maxwell Smart! I'm going to be Mr. Katten's assistant for an indefinite period of time! But please, call me Max!"

"You sound kind of cool," Rick said. "I wish _you_ were our teacher."

"What do you do?" Iris asked.

"Well, I'm a greeting card salesman!"

The class fell silent.

"Hey!" Max argued, "Don't give me that! I _love_ my work!"

"Why are you even here if you're an greeting card salesman?" Rick said. "Why are you even in a trench coat?"

"You're very talkative, young man," Katten said, straightening several piles of differently colored paper in his hands. "Do you know that you have to raise your hand if you wish to talk in my class?"

Rick raised his hand to speak.

"Yes?" the teacher grumbled.

"Try and stop me," Rick boasted, taking up a manly pose. The other students laughed, and Rick gave them a slight bow to announce that he had acknowledged them.

"My boy," Katten said, walking up to Rick and handing him a pile of green papers, which Rick noticed were a breakdown of the rules of the classroom. "Pass these out, and as you do that, read carefully."

"All right," Rick said. He rose up and began distributing the papers to everyone, column by column of desks. "But, you should probably know that just because I _read_ something doesn't mean I'll _take it in_."

Katten let out a disgruntled sigh.

"Sorry, Mr. Katten," Iris said. "You'll have to get used to him."

"I'll try."

"He's always like this. He's a nice guy, he's just obnoxious."

"I'd like more of the first and less of the second."

"Nice guy Rick isn't as fun as obnoxious Rick," Rick said as he returned to his seat next to Iris. "Therefore you won't be seeing him as often."

"Teacher Mr. Katten isn't as fun as inventor Mr. Katten," their teacher said, this time handing a student at the front of a column a pile of blue papers, "but he's here anyway."

"Permission to speak?" Max said, raising his hand.

"You don't need it."

"Great! Listen, Rick, you shouldn't be so obnoxious. It's very annoying." He shuffled over to Rick and Iris, bending his head down between theirs, and resumed his address, stating, in a hushed tone, "_but just between you and me_—"

"And me," Iris said.

"…_Yes, and you, I annoy people all the time._"

"Right on," Rick nodded, patting Max on the shoulder.

"_Thing is, I don't do it on purpose_."

"But you still get the job done, right?" Rick asked.

"Oh, yeah. I'm the best in my field!"

"I don't see how it's difficult to be a greeting card salesman…" Iris began. She picked up her copy of the blue sheet that Katten had been passing out, and found that it outlined the class syllabus. Rick got his copy shortly thereafter.

Suddenly, a phone rang. The ring tone was noticeably "Secret Agent Man." Everyone looked around the room, trying to find the culprit, the violator of school rules, the one with his cell phone on during school hours.

Max whistled to himself and shuffled away from Rick and Iris towards the door. "That's mine," he said. "Excuse me." As rapidly as he had come in, he dashed out.

* * *

Max pressed himself against the wall, checked the hallway for any passerby, and lifted his foot to remove his size eleven-and-a-half telephone.

"Hello?" he said.

"Max, this is the Chief," a familiar old voice answered.

"Thaddeus!"

"Don't call me that. Now, things here in D.C. have been chaotic ever since word starting getting around of KAOS agents patrolling the Glendale area and spying on Bob Katten. You already know that, I'm just reiterating. You've been working in the Glendale area over the summer, keeping close watch over Katten, have you not?"

"Yes, I have!"

"We miss you, you know. What we _don't_ know is what exactly KAOS is up to, or what Katten has to do with them. Have you got any news from this past week?"

"Believe it or not, _yes_! I _do_ have news!"

"Well, what are you waiting for? Let it out! Let's hear it!"

"Katten's working on a device that'll change the future of mankind! For the better, Chief!"

"What _kind_ of device, Max?"

"I don't know. Some kind of super-dooper plant growth formula, or something."

"Plant growth? Hmm. We'll look into it. In the meantime, you just keep watch over Katten. Get back to us as soon as you can when you get more news, understand?"

"Yes, sir, Chief!" he said, giving a two-finger salute. They hung up, and Max lifted his foot again to put his shoe phone back on.

"Hey," another familiar voice said. He jumped to the side and saw that kid Rick's girlfriend, Iris, waiting for him. "Mr. Katten needs you."

"He does?" Max said, still trying to apply his shoe. Darn thing was putting up a fuss! Then again, he was standing on one leg.

"What are you doing?"

"What's it look like?' Max said. "I'm putting my shoe back on."

"Why was it off?"

"…I had an itch on my foot."

"Oh. Did you answer that call all right?"

"Call? Oh, yes, the phone call. Yeah, I answered it. Don't worry, kid, I got it covered!" He laughed and followed her back into room 2202. "Yes, Mr. Katten?"


	2. Lunch

"I still can't believe Mr. Katten wanted Max to _water his garden_," Rick said later at lunch. Sitting at a table in the cafeteria with his friends, he consumed his pepperoni pizza like a lion at an antelope kill, vigorously threatening any potential thieves with a swift swipe and a growl. Even when Iris, who wasn't at all interested in the pizza, touched him on the arm, he swung in her direction and partly, albeit somewhat accidentally, spat in her face in his attempt to safeguard his food.

Mike laughed at this. Rick and Iris's blond friend, today dressed in a green and white striped polo shirt and blue jeans, and with whom they shared memories dating back to elementary school, was a generally suave, conservative fellow with a southern heritage but a California lifestyle. He may have been born and raised for the first few years of his life in Huntsville, but California was so ingrained in his blood by now that the Alabama ancestry only came through when he was with his family or, alternatively, if he ever found himself walking through a swamp.

"He's a teacher, Rick," Iris replied, gently biting off a piece of her own slice. "He's probably busy."

"I can understand _that_," Rick said, "but _watering his garden_? Iris, only _gay_ guys have gardens to water."

At that, Mike almost choked on his soda.

"Oh my god!" Iris gasped. "Are you okay?"

Pounding his chest with one fist, Mike managed to clear his throat and say, "Yes."

"Are you gay?" Rick asked jokingly.

"You wish," Mike smirked.

"Tell that to my girlfriend, why don't you?"

"Why? Are you too scared to tell her yourself?"

"I am _not_ a coward!" Rick retaliated, rising to his feet.

"Dude, I'm _joking_," Mike said. "Sit down, man."

Reluctantly, Rick did, and Iris caressed his arm with hers. "Rick, your problem isn't that you're a coward…"

"Damn right," Rick nodded, resuming his meal.

"…It's that you're too damn brave to begin with."

"And you like that, right?" he said, pausing and turning to look at her.

"Honestly," Iris began, "it gets a _little_ annoying sometimes to have to keep on stopping you from going too far."

"That's _ridiculous_. When have I ever gone too far?"

"_All the time!_" Iris and Mike said concurrently.

Rick stopped for a moment to study them. He then shrugged and said, "Fair enough." It was after he said that that he realized he had finished his pizza, and so got up to throw the plastic napkin he had received with it in the trashcan. "I'll be right back," he told them, pushing in his chair. "Hold my calls." Mike and Iris gave him their obligatory chuckles at the lame joke, and he left.

"So, Iris," Mike said. She turned back to him, looking away from Rick. "What are you getting Rick for his birthday?"

"Oh, nothing," she said, blushing and shaking her head. "It's nothing."

"It's not nothing," Mike replied. He crossed his arms and kneeled in closer to her, resting his elbows on the table, and continued, "I know that look. You're giving him something special, aren't you?"

"It's always special," Iris said.

"Well, yeah, he's your _boyfriend_, how could it _not_ be special?"

"I want it to be a surprise, all right?"

"All right. You can tell me. Come on, spill it."

"No, I mean to _everybody_."

"Even yourself?"

"I _wish_ I could give a gift like that."

"Saturday's not as far away as it looks, you know," Mike said. "You better be prepared."

"I am," she smiled, still blushing. "I am. I am."

"Are you sure? 'Cause I can help you out if—"

"_I'm fine!_" she said, slapping her hand down on the table, thereby silencing the both of them for a few seconds.

"Where's Tom, anyway?" Mike said, turning in every direction in his blue chair (no different from anybody else's, but still) to look around the cafeteria. "I thought he said he was going to meet us here."

"He's probably talking to you-know-who," Iris replied.

"Cell phones can't be on during school hours," Mike said, resuming his normal position on the chair. "He _knows_ that."

"Which is why he's probably off-campus right now."

Mike nodded to express his agreement, adding, "You've got to hand it to those two. They are _inseparable_."

"What do you expect? They've known each other since they were five."

"And then some. Now where did Rick go?"

"Say what?"

"He just up and disappeared!"

Mike and Iris looked all around the cafeteria, as they had for Tom, but indeed, Rick was gone.

"Want to go searching for him?" Mike said.

"Let him go, wherever he is," Iris said. "Something must have come up."

"What could possibly come up? It's the first day of school!"

"And I'm sure he has a legitimate holdup, Mike! Let's just wait, and see what happens before we start making judgments, okay?"

"Who's making judgments?"

"Nobody! Like I said, we wait."

* * *

Five minutes later, Rick reappeared, taking his seat at the table. By now, Tom was there, too, in his usual mix of blues and grays, which, combined with his thick glasses and jet-black hair, was enough to tell anyone who saw him that, on his own, he thought the world was a hellhole. It took the guidance of his family and friends, and especially that of his best friend and girlfriend Oriel in Long Beach, to level him out and bring him at peace. Tom was a year older than Rick, Mike, and Iris, and in spite of the omnipresent pessimism, his maturity showed.

"Where were you?" Iris asked. "We were worried sick!"

"You weren't worried sick about Tom?" Rick said. "Please."

"At least with _him_, we have some idea of where he was and what he was doing."

"I was talking to a classmate. What's the big deal?"

"For five minutes, Rick? Completely out of sight?"

"We were getting fresh air. All you had to do was step outside."

"Should we have?" Mike said.

"Who were you talking to?" Iris said.

"Mila Goldsworthy. She's in my English class this year."

"She a brunette?" Mike said.

"Black hair, yeah. Kind of short. Apparently her mom's from Russia."

"Why's that even important?" Iris said.

"Your parents are from 'Frisco, Iris! This is just what happens when you get to know people!"

"Where's her dad from?" Mike said.

"Oklahoma," Rick answered.

"Eew."

"Normally, I'd just pass that off as typical redneck ignorance, but here I agree with you, man. Still, even the boring states can produce some pretty ones."

"Excuse me?" Iris said.

"But I wish they all could be California girls," Rick clarified.

"Doesn't Mila qualify as a California girl?" Mike said. "I mean…we _live_ in California."

"Well, she was born in Oklahoma. Moved here a few years ago."

"What's your opinion on all this, Tom?" Iris said to the silent tenth-grader sitting between her and Mike. "You know, this whole 'Rick-talking-with-Mila' thing?"

"I think I shouldn't get involved," Tom said. "Whatever is going on, or you think is going on, is between the two of you."

"I was just talking to a classmate! I can't have a normal conversation without everybody thinking I want to abandon Iris for her and take my relationship with the new chick to the—"

"Max?" Iris said, looking behind her boyfriend at the mysterious trench-coated man from their biology class. Max was standing in back of Rick, having been stopped from his walking by Iris's uttering of his name.

Rick quickly glanced behind him and acknowledged the quirky greeting-card-salesman's presence, before turning back and stating, "Damn it, Iris, if you're going to accuse me of something, at least stay focused."

"What are you doing here?" Iris said.

"I'm eating lunch!"

"I think she was talking to me," Max told Rick, "but I would've given the same answer, anyway."

"Who are you, exactly?" Tom said.

"Greeting card salesman. And Mr. Katten's personal assistant."

"Part-time jobs, I'm guessing?"

"No way, pal," Max said, surprised at Tom's casual assumption. "You'd have to be _crazy_ to think my job is _anything_ but full-time. I'm a very important man, after all."

"You sell _greeting cards_," Mike said. "I fail to see what's so—"

"_Hey!_" Max said. "Greeting cards are very, _very_ important. Did you know that without greeting cards, we'd probably still be in Iraq?"

"But we _are_ still in Iraq," Tom said.

Max stared at the teens, eyes and mouth gaping wide open as if he had just been told that he was pregnant. Not his significant other, but _him_. "…I meant Vietnam," he corrected his statement. He exchanged glances with the four teens, and headed outside with his own slice of pizza.

"Same war, different name," Tom said with a sigh, picking up his sandwich.

* * *

"Max?" Thaddeus said, his craggy voice echoing out of the shoe and into Max's ear as the agent consumed his pizza just outside the math and foreign language building's second-floor entrance, which was basically at street level across from the cafeteria. "What's the latest?"

"Heth growing them ath the schoof," Max answered.

"Max, if we're going to speak in code, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know about it first."

After swallowing, Max explained: "Sorry, sir. I was eating. This pizza is _delicious_."

"Well, stop eating for a moment and tell me the news."

"Katten is growing his plants here at the school. Near the front entrance. He had me water them earlier."

"He seems unusually trusting of you, Max. That's either very good or very bad. We'll just have to wait this out and see what happens."

"Thank you, Chief," Max said, taking another bite. "Mmm-mmm! Good stuff!"

"Max, what kinds of plants were they? Flowers, trees, what?"

"Treef," Max said.

"Trees?"

"Treef."

"What kinds of trees?"

"Treef."

"Your attention to detail is inspiring, Max."

"Thank you, Chief."

"That was sarcasm. Listen, I'm sending another agent out there to assist you. Agent 99. You two will meet at the bus stop near the school today at 3:15. That's exactly two hours and forty minutes from now. You got it?"

"I'm trying sir," Max said, probing around his mouth with the pointer finger from his free hand, "but it's really stuck in there."

"_Max!_"

"Oh, right. Agent 99. Sorry, sir."

"You know when and where to meet?"

"Three-fifteen at the bus stop. I got it, sir. Ah!" Max pulled the nondescript piece of food out from between his teeth and flicked it off his finger. "Thaddeus, can I speak freely?"

"Keep it PG, son. And don't call me Thaddeus."

"Sir, I can handle this case on my own. I don't need any help from another agent. I'm the best man you've got!"

"That you are," the Chief said. "But 99 is even better."

"But Thaddeus, that doesn't even make any sense!"

"Oh, I think you'll find that it does. Good day, Max. I'll call again at 2100 hours for an update on your progress."

"Thank you, Chief."

"Stop saying that, you delusional little suck-up."

"Sir?"

"I kid, 86, I kid." The Chief hung up, and Max followed. He had a suspicion lurking in the back of his mind that the Chief wasn't kidding at all, but he ignored that feeling in lieu of continuing with the day's work.

As he was putting his shoe back on, he suddenly realized he was being watched.

A fairly short, pretty girl with black hair and green eyes, wearing a black T-shirt and blue jeans, was standing about ten feet in front of Max, and watching him with genuine surprise.

"Were you just…talking into your shoe?" she asked.

"Yes," Max said. "Yes, I was."

"…_Why_?"

"I think the question is, why aren't _you_ talking into _your_ shoe?"

"I'm not a crazy person."

"You're a high school girl," Max said. "And we _all_ did crazy things when we were in high school."

"Wait, you're not a student?"

"No, I'm not. I'm an assistant for Mr. Katten. And I sell greeting cards. What's your name, kid?"

"Mila," she replied. "Yours?"

"Max. Look, Mila, my line of work is very complicated. If I didn't talk into my shoe, why, horrible things could happen. Horrible, _horrible_ things. Right here in La Crescenta."

"Were you here two years ago? I don't see what could be more horrible than _that_."

"As a matter of fact, I wasn't. But please, spare me the details." He rose to his feet and walked over to Mila, putting one hand on her shoulder, while holding the remnants of his lunch in the other. "What's important is, you don't ask questions, okay? If you ask questions, Mila, you're going to get hurt."

"Don't ask questions? I'm going to get hurt?" Mila carefully looked around her in every direction, before returning to Max's gaze. "Buddy, if something's going down, I think we have the right to know. But because we don't know, we're just going to have to make guesses." She pushed his hand off her shoulder and crossed her arms. "Do you want to know my guess, Max?"

"What's that?"

"I think you're a criminal." Max's eyes opened wide, and he began to sweat. "And judging by the way you said you're working with Mr. Katten, I'm going to guess you two are co-conspirators on whatever it is you're planning. And I may not know what you're doing, but you can rest assured, I'm _going_ to find out." She slowly turned around and began walking away. After she had gotten about twenty feet from him, she turned back around and said, "Oh, and one more thing. My uncle works for the Bureau of Prisons. You better watch your ass." She continued walking away, and Max grumbled.

"Uh-oh," he said.


	3. The Bus Stop

The three o'clock bell rang, and the high school's final classes were thusly dismissed.

As the sophomoric chemistry students excitedly, almost chaotically, dashed out of their classrooms and began talking amongst themselves, Katten called Max over to his desk.

"Yes, sir?" Max said, his arms hanging stiffly at his sides as though he were a soldier.

"Um…at ease," Katten replied.

Max relaxed, and immediately pondered over the fact that those two words more or less rhymed.

"Max," Katten began, rising from his seat and steadily walking over to the window, to look out into the quad three stories below, "I'm worried about my plants."

"How so?"

"Well, remember that formula I gave to you earlier today? That I told you to give to the trees along with the water?"

"How could I forget?" Max said. "That's the whole reason I'm here, Bob!"

"Excuse me?"

"Uh…I mean…you know, working for you, doing everything you say. That's why I'm here. That's my job. Well, my other job."

"You're not a slave, Max, you're just an assistant."

Max nodded.

"Anyway," Katten continued, "I'm worried that you might be endangering them."

"What?" Max gasped. "But I gave each tree three drops, just like you said. One, two, three, _uno, dos, tres_…." He turned his head slightly and Katten saw the contemplative look on his assistant's face.

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to remember how you count to three in French."

"That's not important, Max."

"But Bob, if I can't remember any French, how am I going to woo the ladies?"

"I meant that's not important to the subject at hand," Katten said. "Listen, Max, I hired you expressly to take care of those plants…so how come when I tested the soil underneath the trees for the formula during lunch, the tests came back negative?"

"Whoa, man, you're the scientist, not me."

Katten sighed. "Do you want to know why I think you're endangering the plants?"

"Sure." Max took a seat on the closest empty desk.

"It's not _you_, per se. It's just that…at first I thought I was being watched, then it stopped when I stopped giving them the formula, and _you_ started."

"So you're worried that I'm being watched? By who?"

"That's the thing. We don't know. Next time you water the plants, tomorrow morning, I want you to carefully study the area around you first. If you see someone walking by, question them a little. If you find someone hiding—"

"Tell him it's my turn to hide and their turn to count?" Max laughed.

"This is serious, Max," Katten said. Max straightened up, cleared his throat, and nodded again. "If you see someone hiding, you pull them out, you question them, and then you get back to me about them. I don't want my experiments compromised."

"Nobody likes a spy," Max agreed.

"Oh, joy," a female voice said, startling the adults. They turned around and saw one of the students they had met in the last class session, Samara Pearse, standing at the doorway, watching them. She was a moderately tall junior with dirty blond hair, sharp green eyes, and a fit body that no doubt attracted suitors, even if the personality didn't. "And to think that all this time, I thought everybody hated me because they thought I was a bitch. Well, it's good to have that cleared up once and for all. Now I can finally go home and write in my diary how it feels to finally hear some honesty, and maybe this is a sign that people will at long, long last stop hiding from themselves and others and we can all get along just like ol' Rodney King said we should. Ah, cynicism, don't worry, I'll attend your funeral. You're just like my late sister, after all; you were my best friend. Well, no time to wallow in grief, the Moving On Train is about to get moving along, and if I miss it, ooh boy, I might as well be under it." She ended her overlong sarcastic rant, and Max and Katten just stared at her. "Is it because of my absolutely bangable body, or is because of the speech?"

"The speech, mostly," Max said.

"I just came here because I forgot my binder," Samara said, walking over to her desk in the middle of the room, from under which she pulled her white three-ring binder, which, given that this was only the first day of school, still had a long ways to go before it was crammed with papers.

"Samara," Katten said, "I got the name right, right? I've only known you about an hour."

"You got it right," Samara said, stuffing the binder into her green backpack.

"Okay, Samara…_what_ was the deal with the speech? Why didn't you just say the binder thing in the first place?"

"It's what I do, Mr. Katten, it's what I do."

"Why did you wait so long to say you were watching us?" Max added.

"What? And miss the show?" Samara said. As she flung the backpack onto her back, she added, "Boys, let me tell you something. If it was up to me, 'hippie' that I am, there would be nothing but love, friendship, and happiness all around. But I'm not in charge. Hell, who would want to be? The world is a _shithole_, full of liars, scumbags, cheaters, and whatever else the Dark Prince can think of, and being a sardonic, narcissistic 'bitch', as everyone so eloquently puts it, is just how I get by." She looked at her watch. "I've got to go. See you two tomorrow."

This reminded Max to look at his watch; it was nearly 3:10.

"I've got to go, too," he said, quickly throwing his trench coat over his James Bond T-shirt and gathering his small suitcase off the floor near Katten's desk. "See you tomorrow, Bob."

Max rushed out the door, zoomed past Samara, and exited out the hallway door onto Community Avenue and then a block and half east to the Glendale Beeline bus stop. There, he checked his watch again (3:14), and waited to meet Agent 99, whom he had never met, nor knew anything about.

Not surprisingly, most of the crowd at the stop consisted of students, most from the high school, but a few from the neighboring elementary school. Among this group, Max tried to pick out the oldest-looking, because, logically, an agent couldn't pose as a sixteen-year-old very well, and legally, a minor couldn't and shouldn't be in CONTROL.

Max soon found the eldest of the waiting bus riders, and tapped her on the shoulder.

"Excuse me," he said. "Are you 99?"

The black-haired woman, who looked ambiguously late teens or early twenties, turned around to see who wanted her attention, and gasped at both the sight of this older man and his question.

"You think I'm 99?!"

"That's why I was asking," Max responded.

"Oh my god! I'm hideous!" The woman quickly ran away from the bus stop and around the corner to escape the crowd and their judgmental eyes.

"_No!_" Max shouted, remaining in place. "_That's not what I meant! Come back!_" But it was too late.

"What _did_ you mean?" an Armenian boy asked Max.

"I meant, was she secret agent number 99?"

Several kids muttered to themselves; others raised eyebrows; and still others just snickered, none of them believing that it was a serious question. Behind him, someone slapped her forehead. Max ignored that older-sounding person in lieu of making the kids understand the situation.

"See, I'm a doctor, and she's my patient. She used to believe that she was a secret agent, number 99, but now, I guess she's cured. She's better now! I mean, you know, aside from me supposedly implying that she looked really, really, really old. Do any of you guys know her name? I should find her and apologize…."

The woman behind him cleared her throat loudly.

Max turned around sharply, saw a pretty young brunette about his age and dressed in a similar trenchcoat, and told her, "Lady, please. I'm trying to do my job here."

"So am I, Max."

"How do you know my name?"

The twenty-something lady looked at him bug-eyed and shrugged in a way that said, "_Hello?! It's ME!_"

Max thought about this for a moment, then snapped his fingers and pointed one at her, saying, "Now I remember! Didn't the agency appoint you as my lawyer after I accidentally blew up that building in Hong Kong?"

"What?" one of the teenage boys behind him said. "Hi," he grinned and waved at the woman Max was talking to.

"Hi," she said. Returning to Max, she said, "No, Max. I'm 99."

"Wow? _Really?_ That's…_wow_…"

The woman smiled and nodded happily.

"_What_ is your secret?" Max continued. "You don't look a day over 27!"

The woman slapped her forehead again.

"I'm no expert, ma'am, but at your age, it's probably not healthy to keep doing that."

At this, the woman grabbed Max's trenchcoat collar and pulled him close to her, where she said, into his ear, first in a normal voice, "Max," before segueing into a whisper, "_I'm agent 99_," and then returning to her normal voice, "and for the record, I'm 26." She then let him go.

Max was speechless. 99 waited patiently for 86's response, whatever that might be.

Somewhat expectedly, his eventual response wasn't to be expected.

"Could you do that 'whisper in my ear' thing again?"

"Why?" 99 asked.

"Because it was sexy?" he replied, with an uncertain, hopeful shrug.

"No." 99 turned around and said, "Follow me."

Max sighed, disappointed that she wouldn't whisper in his ear just once more, and said to himself, "Missed it by _that_ much!"


	4. Home Sweet Motel

Once they reached their neighboring houses, four blocks south from the high school, Rick and Iris split and, almost in unison, reached their doors and opened them.

Inside, Rick saw his younger sister Emily watching TV, apparently the Disney Channel. She shared Rick's brown hair and blue eyes, but was considerably better groomed and more immediately likable. Twelve years old, and dressed in a bright pink T-shirt with Hannah Montana on it, she was already showing signs of womanhood, and this made Rick somewhat uncomfortable. Despite being only three years apart—well, three years this Saturday—Rick felt sort of like he was watching a child, the fruit of his loins, growing up. Like her brother, she was inheriting their parents' best traits (and also their worst, but no one wanted to talk about those), and it was only a matter of time before cocky gentlemen callers began nagging this girl, and subsequently, the house in which she lived. Fortunately, Rick was the protective type.

Upon reaching the kitchen, Rick suddenly realized he was beginning to think heavy thoughts, so he quickly turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on his face. Ah, that was better.

"Hi, Rick!" Emily said. "What took you so long?"

Walking back into the living room and taking a seat next to his sister on the forest green sofa, Rick sighed and said, "Iris and I were talking."

Emily gasped. "Are you two breaking up?"

"Whoa, way to jump to conclusions, Emily. No, we're not breaking up. And don't expect us to anytime soon. We're fine."

"Okay," Emily said.

The siblings turned their gaze from each other to the television, where a beautiful blond teenage girl—probably Swedish—was whispering something to a boy she was presumably dating. The boy, like Emily seconds before, gasped, and then said, "No way!" In response to this denial, the girl nodded with a funny expression on her face, and the pre-recorded audience in the background erupted into cheers and applause.

"What just happened?" Rick said. "Is she not a virgin or something?"

"Rick, this is the Disney Channel," Emily answered.

"Point taken."

"Don't you know what this show is?"

"Honestly, I couldn't care less."

"It's _The Swanson Princess_!"

Rick stared at Emily and she stared back at him, neither one certain of what to say next.

Finally, Emily exclaimed, "It's been on for a _year_ now!"

Rick shrugged.

"All right, listen. That's Valerie Swanson, and she's a Scandinavian princess who's secretly living here in America. And she just told her boyfriend who she really is!"

"…Why's she hiding in America? Are terrorists after her family? Are they trying to keep her safe? What's the deal?"

"Scandinavia's really boring."

"She's a _princess_! She has _money_! _And_ a great body! She's got it _made_!"

"You've never been to Scandinavia, have you?"

"Forget it." Rick got up after less than two minutes of sitting and headed upstairs. Once he made it to his room, which, not unlike his hair, looked like it had been hit by a tornado, he turned on his iMac to see who was online and available for instant messaging. God bless AIM, he thought to himself. And God bless Alex Hayes, his longtime friend, a year younger than him, without whom the problems Rick had initially faced on this supposedly user-friendly middle school graduation gift would not have been solved.

As luck would have it, Alex was online. Well, on his iPhone at least—he was probably playing with it as he walked home from Rosemont Middle School, which was several blocks further north and east from his residence (a block away from Rick and Iris's) than the elementary and high schools. The eighth-grader was a technological genius, with expertise rivaling that of his own father, an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In spite of the geekiness inherent in his personality, Alex, perhaps through his friendship with Rick and Iris, was a fairly popular kid, similar to Tom's situation.

Eager to take his mind off the rigors of a new school year, Rick began IMing with Alex, unaware that the information he would learn in the online conversation would prove most unfortunate in the days to come.

* * *

One house over, Iris was walking upstairs after grabbing a quick snack. Her little brother Nathan's door was closed. Cautiously, she knocked.

"Nathan?"

"Don't come in!"

"Why not?"

"I'm busy!"

"Is this door locked?"

"I said don't come in!"

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing!"

"So why can't I come in?"

"You'll regret it, Iris."

She laughed. "Ha! I've played baseball with Rick my entire life! You know you can't beat me in a fight!"

"Who said anything about fighting? Can you please go away?"

At this point, the estrogen was pumping, and the motherly instinct was kicking in. Not the protective part, but the disciplinary part. "Okay, I'm three years older than you, Nathan, which means I'm the oldest person here right now. That means I'm the boss. I'm going to open this door on the count of three. One, two—"

"_NO!_" he shrieked from behind the door.

Iris pulled her hand back from the knob. "Um…what _exactly_ are you doing in there?"

"Ask Rick!"

"What?"

"He'll understand! He'll tell you everything! Go away!"

Iris nodded and headed to her room, where through her window she could see Rick on his computer, presumably IMing with somebody. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and used speed dial to reach her boyfriend. Rick saw his ringing phone, saw Iris through the window, they waved at each other, and he answered the call.

"What's up?" he said. "I was just talking to Alex. He can't come to the party on Saturday. He's flying out to visit his family in Buffalo instead."

"Well, you know what they say. Family comes first."

"Spare me the clichés, Iris. What's going on?"

"Actually, that's what _I_ wanted to ask _you_. Nathan had his door closed and he was _begging_ me not to come in."

"_Oh_."

"And he told me that you'd tell me what he was doing, because you'd understand."

"I can't say for certain I know what he was doing, but I think I have a pretty good guess. The question is: how did _you_ not know what he was doing?"

"What are you saying?"

"Iris, what are teenage boys famous for? Okay, I take that back. _Infamous_."

Through the window and through the phone, Rick saw and heard no response from his girlfriend to this question.

Rick grumbled, and, despite knowing how embarrassing it was for both of them to bring it up, he resorted to an archival memory to answer her pressing question.

"Remember, a year or two ago, you walked in on me that time I thought I was alone?"

Quickly, Iris shrieked, "_Jesus Christ! That's_ what he was doing?" She nearly fell out of her chair, and she saw Rick nod solemnly. "I'm just glad I didn't actually…_see_ anything."

"Are you talking about me, or Nathan?"

"I didn't walk in on Nathan."

"Figured. Although, to be fair, Iris, you and I _have_ been naked together."

"Yeah. When we were _five_, and our parents were giving us _baths_."

"That doesn't make my statement any less true."

"Look, Rick. Can we get off this subject?"

"What subject?"

"You know! The…the S-word."

"You mean the F-word."

"Either one works, damn it! Let's just stay off that topic! Is that so hard?"

"Bad choice of words, Iris."

"I said let's get off it!" She closed her blinds to block Rick from her view.

"Okay, okay, calm down! Sheesh, what's the big deal? It's not like we're being pressured into doing it like Tom and Oriel."

"You are aware that _we're_ the ones pressuring those two, right?" Iris said.

"Totally," Rick said. "Anyway, so are you guys coming to the party Saturday night?"

Pulling her binder out of her backpack and opening it on her desk, Iris replied with a nonchalant "Uh-huh."

"Yeah, who am I kidding? This has been routine our entire lives. I should know without having to ask."

"Who else is coming?"

"The usual, as usual. You, me, Emily, Nathan, Mike, Tom, Oriel, Kent."

"Where was Kent today? Did you see him at all? I didn't." She had finished pulling out the assortment of papers (mostly class rules and/or syllabi) that required signing by herself as well as her parents for each class, and was now proceeding to sign them.

"My guess?" Rick said. "Wallowing in self-pity over Holly somewhere."

"He started drama today, didn't he?" Iris said, turning over the now-signed green sheets her English teacher had printed the class rules on.

"So did we, Iris. He and Tom should be in the 3-4 class together. That's fourth period. You'd think Tom would've mentioned that at lunch."

"You'd think, but let's not forget that he and Tom are a lot alike. They're both sort of in their own little worlds. Kent's always talking about his stories and his birdwatching, and Tom and Oriel just can't be separated."

"Except Tom and Oriel have always been like that. And for the record, they are separated, Iris…by about forty miles."

"You're looking at a map, aren't you?"

"How else would I have known that? And as for Kent, well, a year ago, he was just your usual, run-of-the-mill eccentric, who did great wordplay and improv, and who knew a buttload of useless information. But then his stupid ass had to fall in love. Next thing you know, Holly's at his birthday party, he's fallen way too hard for her, and a month after he comes back from Jersey, she dumps his sorry ass."

"That didn't make any sense at all to me. I thought their relationship was at its strongest when he got back. I mean, they said they loved each other, and _she's_ the one who could barely keep it in her pants, not him! Am I remembering this correctly?"

"I think so, but only Kent knows for sure."

"Whatever," Iris said, having now finished applying her signatures. "You didn't see him?"

"I'm sure Kent's doing fine," Rick said. "At least, that's what he'll tell us next time we _do_ see him. You know he's still thinking about Holly, even though he'd never admit it."

"It's been seven months. Move on."

"So what are you getting me?" Rick asked, laughing at the question that they both knew he wouldn't be getting an answer to for another four days.

"A present," Iris chuckled. "You're going to love it."

"Do tell."

"Rick, I'd love to tease you with misleading hints about what it could possibly be, but I've got things to do. You know, chores and whatnot."

"All right then. Talk to you later."

"Bye."

"Bye." Iris set her phone down and grumbled as she rose out of her seat and walked back to Nathan's room. She again knocked on his door, and said, "Nathan? Would you come out here?"

"Just a minute!" Behind the closed door, she heard his pants being zipped back up, and a minute later, he opened his door. He looked just like his sister, with brown hair that faded into a more orangey brown towards the back, but with his almost obnoxiously bright yellow T-shirt and blue jeans, and unusually scruffy hair, he bore much of Rick's influences as well. Of course, the messy hair was likely circumstantial and not habitual, and Rick usually didn't wear colors that would catch people so off guard. All the signs pointed to Nathan being a growing boy of eleven years, who did what growing boys do and tried to hide it by wearing distracting clothing, but who revealed it at the same time through the nervous sweat running down his forehead and his numb hands. "What is it? What's up?"

"You know what?" Iris said, looking at Nathan's hands. "I'm thinking maybe you should wash your hands before I say anything else."

Nathan looked at his palms. "Why?"

"…Let's not talk about that, okay?"

"Oh. Right. Yeah, okay." Nathan began walking down the hallway to the upstairs bathroom, where he promptly turned on the sink. "You're not going to tell Mom or Dad, are you? Are you, Iris?" he shouted as he soaped up his hands.

"No, Nathan, I'm not going to tell Mom or Dad. But I'm sure they'll end up talking to you about it anyway."

* * *

"So, Max," 99 said, sitting on the bed and taking off her boots. "Tell me about yourself."

"Well, I…" Max began, the potentially complete sentence left unfinished as he watched his undeniably cute new partner remove her black leather foot-protecting apparatuses and reveal pure white socks that, Max guessed, were as pure as the woman whose feet they clothed so well. He was standing in the bathroom, combing his hair, brushing his teeth, and simply freshening up before commencing the night's work. "I…"

"What?" 99 said, suddenly looking up and startling Max. "What is it?"

"I like your socks," Max replied dumbly.

99 studied the foot on her right leg, and pulled off the sock a minute later. "Why?" she asked him. "They're just normal socks, Max."

"No, they're not, 99. They're not. Those socks," he said, stepping out into the main room, "are the nicest socks I've ever seen anyone wear, ever."

"Why is that?"

"I don't know why. But I don't have to. All that matters is, you're wearing those socks."

"One of them," 99 corrected him, tossing the sock into his hands.

"Yes, one of them. Why are you undressing?"

"Excuse me?" 99 said. She smiled and said, "If I was undressing, Max, all of these clothes would be on the floor already. I never undress this slowly."

"I'm not quite sure how to respond to that."

"Don't worry about it. I'm just giving my feet some air, you know? It's been a long day, what with the flight from Washington and all."

"How was your flight?"

"Ask my feet." She lifted her sockless right foot and smiled again.

As she wiggled her toes, Max kneeled down to said foot and asked it, "How was the flight?"

"Feet can't talk, Max," 99 said.

"Where's your sense of imagination?"

"Okay, if you say so." In a goofy, higher-pitched voice, she moved her foot forward and back and replied to Max's question. "It was boring. 99 had to watch _Alvin and the Chipmunks_ to pass the time, and she had to watch as her beloved Jeff Bebe destroyed her childhood memories. Not to mention the cramp." She put her foot down and said, in a normal voice, "But seriously, it—it _really_ sucked."

Max rose back up and took a seat next to 99 on the bed. "So how do you like this place, hmm? The _historic_ La Crescenta Motel?"

"It's a fixer-upper," 99 nodded.

"But if we fixed it up, the history would be lost."

"You know, you still haven't told me about yourself."

"Oh," Max said. "Well…neither have you."

"I asked you first," 99 said.

"I don't get it. Why doesn't Thaddeus just brief us about our new partners?"

"Who?"

"The Chief."

"The Chief's name is Thaddeus?"

"You didn't know that?"

"I did not know that, Max. Thank you. And you know what, you have a point. There's always the possibility that someone from KAOS could pose as an agent, lie about their identity to us, and before anyone could figure out what happened to us, we'd already be six feet underground!"

"The weird thing is, I haven't seen _any_ KAOS agents since I got here two months ago." Max scratched his chin and contemplated this fact.

"I thought that was exactly why we were called _secret_ agents," 99 offered. "So that people wouldn't know that we are, in fact, secret agents."

"You're amazing, 99," Max said.

99 smiled back at him.

"Listen," Max continued, as he stood back up and began gathering his belongings, "we need to talk about what's going down over here. There's a Starbucks near that Ralph's just down the block. Want to get a coffee?"

"Sure," 99 said. "You're still holding my sock, Max."

"Oh," Max said, tossing the sock back into her hands the same way she had tossed it into his. "There you go."


	5. Coffee Talk

Max and 99 stepped into the local Starbucks, and after telling him what she wanted, 99 claimed a table for them to sit at while Max walked over to the counter to give the pretty young cashier their orders. At first, Max was startled by the fact that he actually thought a teenage girl was pretty, but then he remembered that, genetics permitting, they were supposed to look like that. After being handed their drinks, Max realized another reason why he thought this employee—Holly, by the name written on her black apron—was pretty: she bore an almost uncanny resemblance to 99, albeit ten years younger. She had the same plain brown hair and teal blue eyes, which displayed the same immediate kindness and innocence, but surely hid the same passion and strength behind them. Max may have been overly romanticizing about 99, and this idealized notion was affecting how he saw a totally unrelated person, but he didn't care.

"Do you two know each other?" Max, standing between the table and the counter, asked both 99 and Holly.

"What?" the two of them replied simultaneously, before making eye contact with each other.

"No," 99 said.

"I doubt it," Holly said.

"You two seriously aren't related?" Max continued, handing 99 her coffee. "Thank you, ma'am," he said, raising his cup to Holly as he sat down on the chair opposite 99's.

"Ma'am?" Holly said. "I'm sixteen. And no, we aren't related. Not as far as I know." Holly turned to 99 and asked, "Where are you from?"

"Idaho," 99 answered.

Holly nodded and said, "Yeah, we're definitely not related. By the way, sir, you forgot your change." She lifted a few coins off the counter and showed them to Max and 99.

"It's yours," Max said. "The name's Max, by the way."

"Holly," she replied.

"I saw your name tag."

"So why 'ma'am'?"

"I was just being polite," Max shrugged.

"But 'ma'am' makes me feel old," Holly said.

"Women don't like to feel old, Max," 99 added.

"What's your name, anyway?"

"Oh, she's 99," Max said, too quickly for 99 to offer an alternative.

"99?" Holly said. "What—why—why 99, exactly?"

Again, Max replied with lightning speed. "Well, that's simple. It's not her _real_ name. It's just that we're one of those couples who like to take our role-playing _outside_ the bedroom."

99 slapped her forehead.

"Sorry, honey, didn't mean to embarrass you like that," Max said, putting his hand on her shoulder.

"Okay," Holly said as another customer entered the café. "I don't entirely believe you, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt." Before she turned to the heavily bearded, rotund bespectacled man awaiting his chance to order, she said to herself, "But I've really got to learn to stop doing that…" She then beamed to the new customer and said, "Welcome to Starbucks, how may I help you?"

"Max," 99 said, grabbing his arm while he sipped some of his coffee, "I think you should be a little more careful with what you say around people."

"What are you talking about, 99? It's all part of our job."

"Bullshitting people may be our job, but there are limits, Max."

"Lawyers, are you?" said a black-haired, attractive, and well-dressed in a suit and tie adolescent boy sitting across from them at another table and working on his laptop—a MacBook that matched his hair in color.

Max turned to the left and 99 turned to the right to look at him, and 99, taking notice of the boy's looks, said, "John Cusack?"

At this remark the boy grumbled and replied, "I get that all the time."

"Why are you complaining?" Max asked. "You must get laid all the time."

"High school kids aren't the sluts and man-whores you see on TV," the boy added, "and besides, I'm like twenty-five years younger than John Cusack."

"…But you still must get laid all the time."

"I'm seventeen!"

"Good for you, but what does that have to do with anything?"

"It means that I'm not the man-whore you seem to think I am."

"Is my coffee ready yet?" the pudgy man at the counter asked Holly.

"Almost, sir," Holly said. "Max, 99, how's your coffee?" ("Good," they answered her.) "Josh," she said, turning to the John Cusack-look-alike, "are you _sure_ you don't want anything?"

Josh nodded, and then Holly nodded.

"Anyway, we're not lawyers," 99 told Josh.

"Is that more bullshit?" Josh replied.

"No, actually, it isn't."

"Don't you see what you've done?"

"Come again?"

"Once you let it slip that you bullshit _some_ of the time, people are going to start thinking you bullshit _all_ of the time," Josh explained. "Now, I have no idea if you're telling the truth or not!"

"Use your guts," Max said. "What does instinct tell you?"

"I've been listening to my gut since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, I've come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains."

"Where have I heard that before?" 99 said. "I _swear_ I heard that on a movie once."

"Don't ask," Josh said. "Please, for the love of God, don't ask."

"Damn it," 99 said. "This is going to bug me all night."

"Speaking of bullshit," the portly man at the counter, having finally gotten his coffee, turned to the three conversing people at the tables, and said, "who are you guys voting for?"

"Better question," Josh said, lifting a finger, "who here follows the mainstream media?"

Everyone in the coffee shop (Holly, Max, 99, and the heavyset man whose name nobody knew) basically uttered responses that more or less amounted to "yes."

"Next question. Is the propaganda working?"

"What propaganda?" the big guy said.

"You, sir, are finished," Josh said, sighing and shaking his head.

Shrugging, the man said, "I've got to be going anyway." He headed for the door, walking down the path standing between Josh and Max's tables.

"Not what I meant," Josh continued. After he had gone, he added further, "The last two elections were both fixed, and you can be sure this one will be, too, if we let the neo-cons have their way."

"You mean, like, voting for McCain?" 99 said.

"The uninformed voters will deserve who they vote for. Are you informed…99, is it?"

"Yes, it is, for now. I'm voting for Obama."

"The lesser of two evils."

"Why?" Max said. "Who are you voting for?"

"Again, I'm seventeen years old. I can't vote. But if I _could_, I would vote for Bob Barr. Too bad Ron Paul dropped out."

"You're not an Obama supporter?" Max asked. "Well, there's a lot of college girls who won't sleep with you now."

"Do I _look_ like a pimp to you?" Josh said.

"No, but you do look more like a businessman than a student."

"My Dad wanted me to dress like this for today—the first day of my last year of high school." Josh sighed and shrugged. "The end of an era."

"Seniors have the most fun," Holly said, resting her head on her arms on the counter, as she obviously had nothing to do right now.

"You're a junior now, Holly, enjoy being an upperclassmen."

"I will, but first I have to do all the work."

"Which reminds me," 99 said, "Max, we came here to talk about work, so let's get down to it."

"These are the golden years, kids," Max told Josh and Holly. "Enjoy them while you can." Turning to 99, he said, "So, what's the latest?"

"44 and 13 will arrive tomorrow. That way we'll have four agents working on this thing. They'll be a team, we'll be a team. Hopefully, we'll cover more ground more quickly, and finally find us some KAOS agents. Damn it, they're better at our job than we are. We can't let that happen. Not when some amateur inventor's plant growth formula is at stake."

"Well, when you put it like that, this seems like a serious waste of resources, doesn't it?"

"Amateur inventor?" Holly said, lifting her head up. "Mr. Katten? Oh, wait! I _knew_ I recognized you, Max! You're his assistant!"

"That's right," Max said. "Which period were you in?"

"Sixth. Chemistry."

"Right." Max returned to 99 and said, "Anything else?"

"About this whole waste of resources thing…" 99 began, "I basically said all that needed to be said."

"Really? Shit, we could've just stayed at the motel."

"But you enjoyed coming here, right?" 99 said. "With me?"

"It was my idea."

"Oh, good. So this is basically a vacation, isn't it?"

"No, spring break is a vacation. Besides, Mr. Katten needs me to keep an eye on his plants and his formula."

"Well, that still leaves the other eye for me, then, doesn't it?"

"I guess it does."

"When you're not looking at each other or your boss," Josh said, "try keeping an eye on the government. It's okay for us for to invade Iraq to claim oil that's wrongfully ours, but it's not okay for Russia to invade Georgia to reclaim citizens who are rightfully theirs? If you can't see the hypocrisy, I pity you."

"You're a very political guy, aren't you?" Max said.

"Which is why I'm probably on the terrorist watch list. But in all seriousness, my mother is from Russia, so this a very big deal for my family."

"I think World War III is a very big deal for everyone."

"We can only hope it doesn't go there."

Max and 99 rose out of their seats, taking their half-empty coffee cups with them, and headed for the door.

As they walked, Max said to 99, "There's something I forgot to mention to you earlier."

99 turned to Max, raising an eyebrow and opening the door, and asked, "What's that?"

Another teenage girl stepped into Starbucks, 99 holding the door open for her, while Max said, "Is it bad if I accidentally made someone think I'm a criminal?"

"No, Max," 99 sighed, "that is _exactly_ what we need."


	6. Holly and Claire

Holly, resting her head on her arms again, looked to see who was coming in as Max and 99 were leaving, and was absolutely ecstatic to see her best friend Claire Zielinski step up to the counter.

Claire was the athletic type, a tomboy with straight brown hair and green eyes, and dressed in a purple T-shirt (her favorite color, so this totally made sense) and light blue jeans, with a bright blue Dodgers cap to top it all off. She took off this hat, tossed it onto a table as if it were a Frisbee, and reached over the counter to hug Holly.

"Oh my god," Holly smiled, "I haven't seen you in like…an hour."

"I had nothing to do," Claire shrugged and laughed. "So what's up for Miss Down Under?"

"What's to say, Miss Lone Star? We're always with each other before school, after school, at snack, and at lunch."

"Who were they?" Claire said, watching Max and 99 through the window.

"Nice young couple—kind of vague about their identity, though. Although the guy I saw today at school. He's Mr. Katten's new assistant, I guess."

"You haven't told me about that class yet."

"I had to get home and change right after school, you know I had no time to talk."

"So how is it?"

"Well, it goes without saying that Samara is in advanced drama with me this year…"

"Like me," Josh said, raising his hand.

"Except it's your second year," Holly clarified. "Samara and I are juniors, it's only our first year. Anyway, she's in my chemistry class right after that, too."

Claire growled and shook her head. "That…_bitch_."

"What has she _ever_ done to you, Claire? Huh? She's a hippie! All she wants is to spread free love!"

"And VD along with it."

Holly shook her head and added, "You two hate each other for no reason at all! It makes no sense!"

"While we're on the subject of people we hate who are in our classes…you know Kent's in our intermediate class, right? 3-4?"

Holly stared blankly at Claire.

"Which means next year, Rusty and I will be with you in the advanced class, but so will he."

Holly still gave no comment.

"He's obsessed with you, Holly. You know he's only in these classes so he can try and get close to you."

"Now just how in the _hell_ do you know that?" Holly retaliated. "We all know he likes acting just as much as you and me, and just like you, he wasn't able to fit it into his schedule before. He could've been with in drama with both of us at Rosemont, for all we know!"

"Well, I wouldn't put it past him."

"Kent is too nice to turn into some stalker, okay? Besides, aren't you forgetting that if it weren't for _you_, he never would have met me?"

"You're blaming me for opening Pandora's Box, then?"

"Claire, you should be proud. We all know how happy he made me."

"Don't take this the wrong way, Holly, but I seriously think the fact that I was taken was a big reason he managed to move onto you so quickly. Once that happened, he just got lucky."

"He would've liked me more anyway!"

"Girls, let's not start a catfight over who's prettier, okay?" Josh said casually.

"But it's true!" Holly said. "He loves Alexis Bledel, and I look just like her! _And_ we were emotionally compatible! It was practically fate!"

"Holly wins," Josh remarked.

"In retrospect, though, don't you wish you could take it all back?" Claire asked.

"In retrospect, I don't regret a thing," Holly said.

"Not even the break-up?"

"…No," Holly said carefully. "No, not even the break-up."

"Be honest, Holly: are you still thinking about him?"

"Will I ever stop?" The question clearly disturbed Claire somewhat, and Holly acted quickly to clarify. "Think about it, Claire: the first boyfriend is the one to which all others are compared. You don't _really_ know what you want until you've given something a trial run. That's why you still don't have someone since you broke up with Jimmy, and that's why John and I have lasted so much longer than Kent and I. We're both trying to be more careful this time around."

"So how come you and John aren't having epic make out sessions like you did with Kent?"

"Because I was excited to be with Kent." Once again, Holly had misspoken, and Claire needed to be reassured that things were not the way her word choices seemed to be implying. "I mean, I _am_ excited to be with John, it's just that Kent was my first, so you know, when he got me randy, he _really_ got me randy."

"Yeah, but there are _limits_ you have to set, Holly!"

"Right. You didn't set enough for Jimmy, and I didn't set enough for myself. But that's not what ended it between us. That was John."

"Watching you switch boyfriends was like watching the Eagle land. No more worrying about the Reds getting there first, just a great big 'screw you' to the other guy."

"Hey, watch it," Josh warned Claire after hearing the Soviet reference. "Also, Claire, wouldn't Kent technically be the Eagle in this situation, not John? If anything, John's getting Kent's leftovers. I know it's not my place to comment on this whole thing, but Kent's _Apollo 11_ here: he was Holly's first, and just because Holly _may_ have upgraded doesn't make the first boyfriend any less significant."

"_May_ have?" Claire said, looking back at Holly before returning to Josh. "What do you think of John and Holly together?"

"Like I said, it's not my place."

"Do you think I was better off before?" Holly asked with genuine curiosity.

"Is that regret?" Claire said, interrupting Josh before he could answer Holly's question, after which he simply gave up.

"Look, it's over now," Holly told her friend. "Let's just find something else to talk about."

"Can you take a break?"

"Probably, but as soon as another customer comes in, I've got to be up here pronto." Holly informed her incredibly quiet boss that she was taking a break, and having received his permission, she joined Claire at the table the Dodgers cap had been tossed onto.

"So," Claire began, "let's look ahead. You've almost got your license. You've got a steady paycheck now. And with this new boyfriend, you actually _have_ a future."

"Can we please stop comparing the two?"

"Of course. There _is_ no comparison. John is light-years ahead of what Kent could ever be."

"Only in some respects," Holly said. "I don't think John can spew out random facts the way Kent can."

"Yeah, but that's about the most useless ability in the history of mankind."

"You could say the same thing about playing the piano," Holly argued. "But it still sounds nice, doesn't it?"

"A random fact machine hurts the ears. It doesn't sound nice. You and John, you both play the piano. One of many things you two have in common. Kent doesn't play a damn thing."

"When we were walking home from school to his house for his birthday party last year, he told me wanted to learn. He writes songs, he just can't play any instruments."

"You remembered that—why?"

"Kent asked me if he could create a character for his stories named after me. I gave him permission. He gave me a sample scene. I shared it with everyone—"

"_That_ was excruciating," Claire rolled her eyes.

"And I've told John that. I've told John all about Kent and everything that happened last year." She bit her lip and sighed. The art on the walls of the coffee shop did little to cheer her up—and not because she worked there.

"You should just be thankful you didn't let him inside you. If Kent had violated you, I don't know what I would do."

"I would hope you'd be happy for me no matter what," Holly said, looking into her best friend's eyes. "I mean, it would be _my_ decision, after all. Kent cares about me too much to put his own interests ahead of mine." There was an awkward pause, then Claire looked at Holly suspiciously, and Holly asked her, "Claire, do you think I should talk to him?"

"Who? Kent?" Claire said. "Uh-uh. No. No way. Holly, listen to me. Hey, look at me." Holly lifted her head, revealing a surprisingly depressed face. "You talk to him, Holly, and he wins. He wins."

"I…wasn't aware that this was a competition."

"_All_ relationships are competitions. And not just the romantic ones, I mean family, friends, co-workers, people you pass by on the street, _everything_."

"Our relationship is not a competition."

"Yes it is. What are we arguing about right now?"

"This is a competition only in the way that Dodgers versus Padres is a competition."

"There's a game tonight, but that's not the point," Claire said. "The point is, if you talk to Kent, all these walls will come tumbling down. And what happens when your castle has no defenses left?"

"Claire—"

"You're no longer the king."

"Claire," Holly said, putting her hand on her chest and taking deep breaths, "I don't think that's going to happen." Holly knew that she still loved Kent, not in the way she loved John, but in that lingering nostalgic way that meant their issues were far from settled. Mostly because of Kent's own refusal to move on, and her multiplying guilt. She was the bee he had thought would lead him to honey. Which she did, but then she stung him in the midst of John's arrival, and Kent was left with the stinger in his heart, plain for all to see, yet he was still too stubborn to acknowledge, much less remove, it.

Bees die once they sting someone.

Both Kent and Holly were at fault for creating this secluded dumpster of emotions, in their own ways. He could have simply moved on, but for whatever reason, Holly just wouldn't leave him. Her breaking it off on Valentine's Day was probably a huge factor, though. At the same time, she'd never given him full closure, or rather, _dis_closure, having started seeing John before properly (?) ending what she had with Kent, and during the break-up keeping her reasons vague. She'd assured the poor guy it was her, not him, but during the sporadic month until St. Patrick's Day when they last spoke, he seemed to alternate between blaming himself and blaming her hidden ego. She'd begged him to fight for her, if he truly cared for what they had, but Kent had took that to mean she had an inflated sense of self-worth—a revelation that surprised everyone who heard it—and just wanted to have the ego fed. Since then, however, he'd appeared incredibly depressed, even for someone as lonely as him.

Alas, she never told Kent the reason she had ended their relationship was because she had met John. No doubt Kent, watching her from a distance, had seen them together at some point in the second half of their sophomore year, but did he know she'd been seeing John since before calling it quits with him? From the deadly ego to the secret affair, Holly had felt more like her mother everyday, and there was a damn good reason she was estranged from her ex-husband and daughter.

"Look, you want to tear some walls down?" Claire offered. "Okay, I've got a better idea. This will get Kent off your mind for sure. The next time you and John are alone, just—well—sleep with him."

The sound of Claire's voice thrust Holly back into reality. In milliseconds she processed the sentences Claire had just spoken, and responded with a perfectly on-cue "_What?_" that made it seem impossible that she had been absorbed in the regret drawer of her memory.

"Hey, I know it sounds radical, but that's the whole point. You lose your virginity, and everything changes. You and John are a great couple, no question. It will strengthen your relationship, _and_ you won't be thinking about Kent anymore."

"John only moved in from Colombia a year ago. And we've only been dating a few months. There's no way in hell he and I are ready to take that big of a step forward. Besides, considering the circumstances under which you lost _your_ virginity, your advice on the matter is iffy at best. John and I will get there, when we get there…_if_ we get there."

"You want to go down that route?" Claire said. "Okay, fair enough. We'll just get the opinion of someone who wasn't conned into losing it. And luckily for us, he's sitting right over there." Holly and Claire both turned in their chairs to look at Josh, who tried to act like he hadn't been listening to the entire conversation. "Josh," Claire asked, "when did you lose your virginity?"

"I really don't think a man's opinion is warranted in a situation like this," Josh replied, reluctantly turning around to see his classmates. "And what makes you think I'm not a virgin?"

"…_Really_, Josh?" Claire said.

"All right, if you insist," Josh said. "Without getting into anything you might call detail, I lost my virginity when—" he was cut off by a ringing cell phone, the ringtone being "Carry On Wayward Son" by Kansas. "Excuse me," he said as he reached into his pocket and answered the call. "Hello? Oh, hey, Dad. What's that? She what? Okay, I'll be right there." While still holding the phone in his right hand, Josh turned off his computer, put it in his bag, and threw his black coat back on. "Yeah, Dad, I'm at Starbucks. Yeah, the free wi-fi. Okay, leaving now. Bye." He turned off the phone, stuffed it back in his pants pocket, and turned to a disappointed Claire and Holly to say, "My little sister's just—no time to explain, I've got to go. Sorry I couldn't share my story with you, but I'm sure you're better off not knowing. See you two tomorrow." He hurried out the door Max and 99 had exited through five minutes before him, and quickly drove off.

"I'm not going to sleep with John," Holly said. "We are a _long_ way from that point, okay? But I still think talking to Kent would be a good idea."

"That's a gamble if I ever heard one," Claire replied. "Here's another one. Remember I said there's a game tonight? If the Dodgers win, if my team wins, you don't talk to Kent—at all. But if the Padres win, your team, you can decide what you want to do."

"Claire, I'm not going to let some stupid baseball game determine how I treat someone I used to call my lover."

"If Kent talks to me in class tomorrow, and asks about you, what do you want me to tell him, Holly?"

"That's not my decision, just like me talking to him isn't yours."

Holly saw a family of four heading towards the door of the coffee shop, and she left her seat to resume her work as a barista.

"From now on, Claire," Holly said, straightening her apron and realigning her Starbucks cap, "let's consider Kent back in our lives. Not directly, but, you know, he's …_there._"

"Obviously he never _left_ you," Claire said, shaking her head, throwing her Dodgers cap back on top of it, and, in a reversal of her entrance, leaving the coffee shop as others came in.

As the mother and father of the adorable pre-fourth-grade kids stepped up to study the menu hanging on the wall behind her head, Holly thought about her predicament with Kent—and now Claire as well—and wished she could simply grind some beans into a delicious and aromatic solution to it. That metaphor was as far as she got before the husband spoke and actual physical drinks had to be made instead.


	7. The Swanson Reality

After three and a half exhausting hours, the taping of the episode was finally finished. The director yelled, "cut" (followed quickly by "print" and then all-encompassing compliments to his cast and crew), and the studio audience cheered. This was partly because they could finally leave this place and get something to eat, and partly because, at least among the tweenage girls, they had finally lived their dream. They had seen Valerie Swanson in person. Sure, she was several dozen feet away, separated from her fans by a metal barrier of cameras and the uninteresting men controlling them, but to be in the _same room_…oh my god. Oh my god. It was just so…oh my god. A select few pubescent boys, not exactly the intended audience, had also dragged their parents to this taping, pretending to appreciate the show for some quality it did not remotely have, but their elders knew better. The dads in the crowd certainly had no trouble sympathizing, having had the same problem with Marcia Brady when they were growing up. Then _Charlie's Angels_ came, and so did they along with it.

A bell rang, signaling the end of the day and the beginning of the long clean-up. Valerie, dressed in a showy red shirt and blue jeans with a dark blue jacket and various bracelets on her wrists, sighed and began walking back to her dressing room. Right behind her was Jacob Merrick, her black-haired co-star and onscreen boyfriend, with whom she had just shared a big, clichéd redemption kiss at the end of this episode.

"Valerie!" he shouted, catching up to her.

"What is it, Jake?" Valerie said, taking her purse out of her locker and immediately pulling out her cell phone. Opening it, she remarked, "Huh. Looks like I got a text message from Miley."

"Listen, Valerie, I was wondering something," Jake continued. The two of them were nearly at the dressing rooms now, meaning before too long, his window—and her door—would be closed.

"Well, tell me then," Valerie said. She stopped at her door, clearly marked with a huge star and her name, and turned around to listen to his thoughts.

"We've been dating each other…well, kind of a long time now, right?"

Nervously, Valerie sighed and rolled her eyes. "Yes…."

"Anyway, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to, maybe, I don't know, take our relationship _off_ the screen and into—"

"Are you aware that when you're kissing me, you're not even kissing the real _me_? You're kissing Valerie Swanson, the _character_, the _princess_, not Valerie Swanson, the singer and actor."

"So how would the _real_ Valerie kiss me?'

"She wouldn't."

"Oh, that's cold."

"Excuse me, I have things to do," Valerie said, turning around swiftly and entering her room, locking it behind her. She took off her jacket and aligned herself opposite a six-foot-tall mirror; letting her straight blond hair down, she took out her cell phone and checked her messages. Her father, the one who had thrust her into this god-awful children's programming, had called about an hour ago. Apparently Stu, her usual limo driver, was sick and would not be picking her up today; a new guy, Garth, would temporarily be taking his place. "Bummer." Garth's number had also been texted to her shortly thereafter.

Suddenly, there was a knock at her door.

"Who is it?"

"It's Stacy."

"Come on in. Lock the door behind you."

Stacy Deadman was Valerie's manager, working with the Swansons to schedule filming and concert dates, press interviews, and everything in between. She had been there since Valerie was a little girl growing up in Fairbanks: writing songs and singing them, and alternating between playing guitar and bass. By her teens, Valerie was dead set on a music career, until her father decided to take the family to Hollywood, where she ended up auditioning for Disney. They recognized her musical talents as soon as they saw her, but _Hannah Montana_ was beginning to spike in popularity, and so, they quickly convinced her to act so that they could rip off their own hit, with another high-profile teenage girl (this time a princess rather than a pop star) living incognito as a high school kid. _The Swanson Princess_ premiered in summer 2007 to modest ratings at first, but it soon became prized competition with _Hannah Montana_. Now Valerie, who had only wanted to be a singer and songwriter (and occasional model), was a moneymaker all her own, following in the footsteps of every popular Disney program by being exploited in all possible kid-friendly manners. Stacy was there to make sure it all didn't get out of hand.

"Bad day, Val?" Stacy asked. She was a skinny black woman with frizzled hair, who had long been like a second mother to the star; she claimed a seat and waited for her friend and business associate to answer.

"Every day's a bad day when you're forced into pleasing millions," Valerie explained. She took a long hard look into the mirror once more, her baby blues a reminder of better days. "Look, I'm fine with this show, in spite of its stunning mediocrity, but I'd rather it be a jumping off point for what I _really_ want to do, not what Disney thinks I should do. Two seasons is enough. Let's talk to the writers, see if we can convince them to end this next year."

"I'm sure that won't be a problem," Stacy nodded, writing in her planner. "A woman like you can have anything she wants. Which reminds me, any ideas for what you want to do for your birthday?"

"Have I ever wanted anything extravagant? We don't need the whole cast and crew like we did last year. I'm turning seventeen, Stacy. I'm practically an adult." Valerie reached for her casual clothes, basically a less flashy carbon copy of her on-set wardrobe, resting in a pile on a nearby table. "Which of course brings both good and bad things."

"Such as?"

Valerie pulled off her shirt and pants, tossing them onto a wooden chair beside the table, and as she stood in her underwear, looking at herself in the mirror, she sighed.

"You're not ugly," Stacy said cautiously. "You know that. Not in the least."

"That's exactly the problem," Valerie said. She turned around in a circle several times, studying her body's curves and contemplating the sensual pleasure they would eventually provide some lucky guy. The first time was supposed to hurt, but after that it could only get better. Her sexuality on a personal level was nearing zero on the countdown, but the problem with launching that rocket is there's a huge fiery explosion you have to deal with. In Valerie's case, since she was a celebrity, this was especially problematic. "I've gone to some fanfiction sites and seen stories about Princess Valerie that were _clearly_ written for the sole purpose of imagining me naked and doing me. It's _sick_. The shit some people will pull to get a hard-on."

"It's the Internet, honey. There's not really much we can do."

"I know. I hate that they're writing that crap, but they're not breaking any rules by doing it. Of course, I'll be legal in just over a year, and this only the beginning. I'll bet before I'm twenty _Playboy_ will be asking me to bare it all. And the _really_ scary thing is, because I'm not ashamed of my body, I worry I might not have any issues with that." Valerie gave a simultaneously shocked and depressed look to Stacy. "Oh, thank _God_ I'm still a minor and have time to think about this."

Her cell phone rang, and when she picked it up, Valerie learned it was her father again. "Dad? What is it?"

"You got my message from before, right, Val?" he asked.

"Yeah, yeah, of course I did. Why, is there more?"

"Yes, actually. When Garth called me about the replacement, he told me he knew how stressed you were—"

"We just started filming the new season a month ago! I'm not _that _stressed!"

"—And he wants to take you away from it all. Wherever you want to go tonight, he'll take you there. Everyone's got the day off tomorrow, so there's no reason to come back too soon. You deserve a break."

"Do I ever," Valerie said with a hint of sarcasm.

"I can't believe I'm actually saying this to you, but party on, Valerie."

"Okay. Thanks. Bye." She closed her phone and set it back down.

"Did he just _encourage_ you to let loose?" Stacy asked. "That's some responsible parenting."

"Since when have I ever 'let loose'? It's not like I'm Lindsay Lohan or something. He trusts me, and for good reason."

"What _do_ you want to do tonight?"

"Get dressed, for one thing," Valerie said, remembering she was still half-naked. She grabbed her casual clothes (some jeans and a green t-shirt adorned with the image of a flock of birds on a tree) off a rack adjacent to the one holding her officially sanctioned costumes, and placed the ones she had just taken off back where they belonged. "The first sign of a slutty celebrity party animal is her tendency to wear next to nothing." Now fully dressed, she turned to Stacy and said, "That's not going to be me."

"I'd say you're better than most of your fellow teen idols, but I'm biased," Stacy admitted. She rose to her feet, gathering from body language that Valerie was ready to face the world.

The two of them left the studio through the back door, and outside, Valerie put out her obligatory sunglasses and hat, which Stacy had carried in her hands until they reached the door. The ironic thing about the "layman" disguises worn by celebrities was that they were never what laymen actually wore, and so they were not really disguises at all. Valerie gave Stacy the go-ahead to leave, and then she began walking out into the street, among the common folk she wished she could blend into better.

Not five minutes of unidentified-celebrity solitude had passed before paparazzi cameras flashed her in the face, and a crowd formed around Valerie.

"God damn it."

"Valerie," an obnoxious middle-aged blond woman began, "you're from Alaska. What are your thoughts on Senator McCain's pick of Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate?"

That woman had been a news item for less than five days, and for the life of her Valerie couldn't understand why. Not that the question was particularly relevant to Valerie right now anyway: in terms of the all-too-important future of the country, yes, it was relevant, but in terms of her status as a fellow Alaskan, it thankfully wasn't. She'd been living in California, working on _The Swanson Princess_ and recording albums, during Palin's entire run as Alaska governor thus far, and the press should've known that, but of course they just wanted the scoop, regardless of how they embarrassed themselves in the process. Reluctantly, Valerie gave them the benefit of the doubt and decided to answer the question—but not before demanding some space.

"I'm not much for politics, but I know pandering when I see it. I think McCain's just hoping to get some disgruntled Clinton supporters to vote for him instead of Obama, and frankly, that's ignorant and sexist. Palin is no Clinton. Sooner or later, this decision's going to come back and bite him in the ass." Valerie mentally slapped herself for putting the image of an old man's pasty white ass in her head. Yup, there were going to be some nightmares tonight.

"What about your cameo in _High School Musical 3_?" an older man, well-dressed and well-timed, blurted out. "Can you tell us anything about that?"

"I'm personally not a fan of those movies, but I've got a six-year-old cousin back in Fairbanks who is, and when I got the call, I decided I'd do it for her."

"Do you sing in it?"

Better than my co-stars, Valerie thought. "Yes," she said simply. "A few lines."

Another camera flashed in her face, though the sunglasses shielded her decently well.

"Is it true they're working on a _Swanson Princess_ film?"

"No, that's just wishful thinking from some fans."

The stupidity of the press left Valerie feeling dumber every time she responded to one of their questions. Was it so hard to just wait for a press conference? No, of course not, they were like tigers, prowling through the jungles of L.A., waiting to pounce on their victims.

Speaking of tigers, they were still endangered, Valerie thought. Species are going extinct, genocides are raging in third-world countries, the Bush administration was long overdue for impeachment—and they're crowding around _her_, asking questions they'd asked time and time again and, at least among the men, undressing her with their eyes. The world needed to get their priorities straight.

"No more questions," Valerie ordered. She swept her hand up, signaling them to leave. A few people remained, asking for autographs; she signed them, and then sighed. She pulled out her phone and dialed Garth's number. "Garth?"

"This is he." He had a mysterious voice, giving the impression that he was both fun and strict, light and dark, friend and enemy. He sounded like a tough man, but willing to do as ordered in spite of his own desires; basically, a limo driver that could just as easily pass as a bodyguard. (That'd actually make a decent action movie.) "Ready to be picked up?"

Valerie confirmed this, and told him her location. "I assume you know where I live," she added, since it wouldn't do much good for either of them if the situation were otherwise.

"Of course," Garth said. "I know exactly where to take you, Ms. Swanson."

"You can call me Valerie," she said.

"I'm on my way, then, Valerie."

Valerie closed her phone and the wait began. She decided to think about what to do tonight. It was a Tuesday, a day ranking just below Monday in terms of weekly despair for laypeople, but when you had as much power as she did, you could negotiate anything. (Although she had the night off, so there wasn't much to negotiate.) Valerie knew she was too intelligent to go clubbing, drinking, or otherwise act naughty, so she set her sights on tomorrow instead. Now that she had her license, she could go birding tomorrow morning, maybe in the mountains: it was September, still warm enough that many of the mountain specialties would still be around. It was in the middle of the week, too, so there wouldn't be a lot of crowds to worry about. With that, tomorrow was set. The Santa Monica Mountains were closest, so she decided she's go there, maybe to Malibu Creek State Park.

But what about _tonight_?!

Ten minutes passed without conclusive results. That's when Garth pulled up in the limousine, and a relieved Valerie decided she'd just ask him for ideas. She climbed into the limo and the ride home began. But only temporarily, because there were more exciting places to be seen.

"Garth," she said, "I have absolutely nothing to do tonight, so I need your help. What should I do?"

"I'm glad you asked," the man sitting in the driver's seat replied, his medium-length black hair hanging down under a black hat and above a generic suit. She couldn't quite see his face, but his voice was definitely Garth's. "There's some people I know who you should meet. Ever heard of a place called La Crescenta?"

"Maybe. Isn't it near Glendale, or something?"

"That's exactly right. Do you like Chinese food?"

"You better not be asking me out."

"Don't worry, Valerie. It's just that they just happen to work at a Chinese restaurant. We can be there in forty-five minutes."

"All right. Take me there." A few seconds later, Valerie double-checked what she was getting herself into. "What should I expect?"

"Oh, they're not fans of yours, Valerie. Neither am I. We're just professionals, and we happen to have an offer for you."

"At a Chinese restaurant? What kind of offer are we talking about?"

"The kind you can't refuse."

Valerie still hadn't seen _The Godfather_. "Whatever. Okay, I'm interested. I just want to be home by ten, okay? I'm going to have to get up early tomorrow if I want to go birding in the mountains."

"You got it," Garth said. "La Crescenta, here we come."


	8. Rocky

The Rocky Cola Café was a local restaurant with a fifties flavor and a bright red design on everything from the seats (be they chairs or leathery booths) and tables to the walls and doors to the uniforms worn by the employees, among them a pair of high school juniors who were on their break that Tuesday evening and actively discussing the song playing on the jukebox.

"Okay, so hear me out," the stubbly Hispanic boy said, his face having cleared up well from its slightly more embarrassing underclassman years. "When this chick is singing about her man, 'Lollipop', she's totally singing about oral sex. She's downstairs, sucking on those bad boys and giving him blue balls. I mean, come on, Terra, do you _not_ see the resemblance between a lollipop and damn testicle?"

"Yeah, I see it," his black-haired coworker responded, "but there's no way she's singing about oral. First of all, no one had that kind of subtlety back then, at least beyond rockin' and rollin', which we all know meant both sex _and_ jamming with the music. Second, even if they did, someone would catch it and it wouldn't pass the censorship tests! Her boyfriend is _sweet_, he pleases her like a sugar high, but that's it, Rusty. Not that I should be surprised by your interpretation of this annoying shit."

"Nor I yours," Rusty said, in a rare moment of eloquence. "You girls always romanticize everything. But you can't romanticize sex! It's naked bodies exchanging fluids! It's dirty, dirty, dirty, all the way through."

"As if a virgin would know," Terra laughed.

"Are you free after work? We can change that."

"I thought you liked _Claire_. You know, the way you've _always_ liked her?"

"Hey, if she's got a great body and a tolerable personality, and our age difference isn't wide enough to be creepy and/or illegal, I don't care who she is, I'll hit that."

"Well, I wouldn't have sex with you, anyway," Terra said. "Seeing as I'm still a virgin, too."

"No hard feelings," Rusty nodded, "besides the obvious."

"You're disgusting."

"Watch it now, Terra; you're in dance, remember? You flaunt that sexy body of yours around onstage with a dozen other revealingly dressed girls. Don't criticize _me_ for being blunt about my hard-on when you spend five hours a week training to give everybody one."

"It's _exercise_," Terra said, "and you _know_ it."

"Sex is exercise, too, but they don't give us a class for _that_."

"And Holly's in dance, too, have you forgotten that? One of our best friends?"

"Nice girls have to let the naughty out somehow. And I know she's not enthusiastic about letting it out with John the way she wanted to let it out with Kent."

"Whatever," Terra said as she checked her watch. "Break time's over." She and Rusty scooted out of their booth seats and walked back to the kitchen.

* * *

Up the few short stairs to the second level of the restaurant, three Chinese women, who were ambiguously in their late teens or early twenties, sat around a circular red table, each dressed in unnecessarily showy, sparkling blouses with black knee-length skirts to accompany those blouses. Each girl's pitch-black hair was tied back into a bun, and as one traveled around the table, the women got increasingly taller, from the shortest, dressed in an green blouse, to the one of medium height (blue), and, finally, to the tallest (purple). The height and clothing differences made these otherwise nearly identical women fairly distinguishable.

One of the four seats at their table was empty, as they awaited the arrival of their higher authority and somewhat father figure. He had told them he would be back in time for this dinner, and that he would even handle the check, but alas, he was running late, and there was not a whole lot any of them could do about it. He'd delivered the package to their establishment earlier, making that part of the plan go smoothly, but after leaving again to help an authority that outranked him within the business—and for that matter, most everybody else in the business as well—he hadn't been seen by any of them.

But when the boss is running late, and he doesn't have a reputation for it, those below him faced the dilemma of whether or not to act on it. He might well be in danger, but it was just as likely that he was in control of his situation. Half an hour had passed, the sisters having just about finished their meals in that time, and still no word. He'd said he would call them should he need them, but unless one or more of the trio were in a compromising circumstance that they couldn't handle themselves, the reverse was not true.

"You know what irks me?" the youngest girl, in the green, said to break the silence between them during the wait.

"Let me take one guess here, Betsy," the oldest, in the purple, said. "Your boyfriend?"

"No," Betsy said. "You're thinking of a different word ending in 'k'."

"And starting with 'f', right, Mary?" the blue-bloused middle child asked her older sister as she wiped her mouth and chin with a napkin.

"Yes, that one," Mary replied. "And you know, we _can_ say it. Freedom of speech, it's great. Much better than in China."

"This isn't a bar, you two," Betsy said. "There are families here. We don't want little kids exposed to that word, do we? What if they were our own kids? No, we wouldn't, so _don't_ say it."

"Fine, I won't, but see that empty booth over there?" Mary said as she pointed. "Behind you, Besty? Those kids that were just sitting there, those _employees_, were talking about oral sex and blue balls. Do you see anyone complaining?"

"No, but—"

"Stop," Mary said, making a "talk to the hand" gesture. "Sex is natural, sex is good. And, besides, if the employees can talk about it, who's to say we can't?"

Betsy sighed. "Well, I don't like it."

"No doubt you'd vote Republican if you were a citizen," the middle sibling said. "Anyway, you were saying something, Besty? Something that 'irks' you?"

"Yeah," Betsy nodded. "Thanks, Shirley. And this actually goes right along with Mary's whole First Amendment cursing-in-public way of thinking. Looking at the three of us here, thinking about what would happen if our fourth had arrived, it makes me wonder why criminals in movies use such public settings to talk about what they're planning to do."

"I think I know what you're getting at," Shirley interrupted. "Why discuss such obviously illegal activities in a fully exposed place, where everyone curious enough to listen in can get word on your plans and easily report to the police about them?"

"Exactly. I mean, what if a police officer had been sitting over there instead of our waiter and her friend?"

"There wasn't one there," Mary said. "And we haven't said a word about anything. We're restaurant owners, not criminals."

"But what if there _had_ been?" Besty said. "Remember the opening scene of _Pulp Fiction_? Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer are talking about robbing the very same restaurant they're eating breakfast at! Hell, even if they were going to rob somewhere else, it doesn't change the fact that _anyone_ walking by could've heard what they were saying, and immediately called 911! It's just so stupid! Why did we even come here in the first place?"

"Betsy," Shirley said. "Like Mary said, we _haven't_ said anything."

"You're missing the point! We are putting ourselves in very real danger by meeting in public for these meetings!"

"Ironically," Mary said, "the more you freak out about this here, when we haven't done anything incriminating, the more you just call attention to yourself, and in turn Shirley and I as well. So shut up, Betsy."

"_Wongs_," a voice shouted from downstairs. The three sisters spun around swiftly to see their boss, dressed in considerably more casual clothing than his suit from earlier, waiting for them at the front door. He motioned them to join him at the entrance, and while the girls walked down there, the boy waiter traveled in the opposite direction with two plates of all-American burgers and fries in hand.

Betsy looked behind her and saw him head over to the attractive young couple at the back corner of the restaurant, more than likely classmates at his school, and give them the sustenance they'd so patiently been waiting for. But then Garth snapped his fingers and Betsy put her eyes where her paycheck was. "Sorry to keep you waiting, girls," Garth said, "but there was a problem and it had to be dealt with. And if I don't get paid, you don't get paid either. In lieu of my delay, we'll talk business in the car. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," Shirley nodded. She pointed to Terra, waiting at the cashier several feet away, and said, "And now she needs to get paid, too."

"Yes, she does. Receipt?" Mary handed Garth the receipt, he examined it, and then he paid the teenager what was due, plus a tip. After a quick glance at her nametag, he said, "Terra," after which she looked at him cautiously, "do you enjoy this line of work?"

"Not a whole lot," she shrugged, "but this isn't supposed to be a permanent job anyway."

"How would you like to make some extra money?"

* * *

Terra's eyes widened, and she looked behind Garth at the Chinese girls she'd served earlier, then gulped and said, "You're not a pimp or anything, are you?"

Garth laughed. "Not in the slightest. Mary, Shirley, and Betsy here run that Chinese restaurant just down the street, the Fortune Cookie Club. We're running short on employees, and we could use an extra hand. I think a pretty white girl like you could help attract more customers."

"Thanks," Terra nodded, "but I'm fine here, and on top of that there's all my schoolwork, and—"

"How much do they pay you here?"

"Ten dollars an hour."

"I'll double that."

Terra thought about the offer, but then saw Rusty coming back downstairs and decided she'd rather stay with a friend, and work at a place where other friends reliably visited, than take a chance at a new establishment with people she barely knew.

"Just in case you change your mind," Garth said, reaching into his coat pocket, "here's our card."

She took the card and politely studied it before putting it in her pocket and smiling in a way that they could probably sense was fake, but they ignored that fact and left the building, without any of the flair of the King.

* * *

"How are your burgers?" Rusty asked, hiding his genuine interest in Holly and Terra's dance classmate behind a generic question any good waiter would ask. Although, seeing as Alexis wasn't eating her burger yet—instead, she was chewing on a fry that Rusty found oddly phallic—some of the hiding wasn't very seek-worthy.

"They're good," Shane replied, in a tone so drab and boring, yet at the same time so obviously douchey, if Rusty were in Lex's position, he would have ended the date right then and there. The sweaty, greased-up blond hair, the white wifebeater he was wearing, the football player status, the excessive and undeserved bedding of beautiful women (the Darwinian twist that many were just as dumb as he was notwithstanding)—god, this guy was so teen movie cliché, it sickened Rusty just to look at him. "Thanks, man."

"Smells good," Lex added, setting the fry she had in her fingers down into the basket and picking up the cheeseburger Rusty had served her a few minutes prior. She bit into it and gave Rusty a thumbs-up (and a smile obscured by the food in her mouth). Appropriately for Shane, she fit the bill of a ridiculously hot girl with brains stuck with an equally hot boy without them, in another teen movie cliché come to life. With her amazing body, dark brown hair, and (fairly misleading) "bad girl" vibe, capped off with a Danish bloodline, she reminded him of the actress Eliza Dushku, whom Rusty was sure had played a role in some lame but enjoyable comedy that paralleled Lex's life at this very moment. Rusty watched her chew on the burger and nearly fell into a trance doing so, the spell not being broken until Shane shouted, "_Hey!_"

"Sorry, man," Rusty said, shaking his head, in what Shane thought was simply a self-recovery from the brain freeze induced on the waiter by his girlfriend, but to Rusty was also a blatant denial that he was not sorry in the least.

"Stop staring at my girl, dog," Shane added pointlessly, and as Rusty and Lex knew, embarrassingly.

"_Everyone_ stares at your girl, _dog_," Rusty said.

"Shouldn't you be helping other customers right now?"

"It's a Tuesday night. Look around. Not a lot of people, Shane. I've got time to spare."

"Well, don't spend it thinking about putting your dick inside my girl. Virgin."

"Do you even have a job, dude?"

"No, but tonight," he turned to Lex and grinned, "I'm thinking I'll be getting one."

"You won't," Lex and Rusty said together. Surprised by this synchronization, they shared a laugh shortly thereafter.

"What the hell was that?" Shane said, looking back and forth between the two of them.

"A Tuesday night, Shane?" Lex said. "On the first day of our senior year? _Really?_ I'm not putting out tonight."

It was obvious that Shane had been hoping for exactly the opposite, but even in his agonizingly virginal state, Rusty knew that the best girls ("best" could mean anything, but in general it meant "worth the emotional investment") needed some kind of romance factor, however minuscule, before giving it to their partner. Claire had been something of an exception, but considering whom her ex-boyfriend Jimmy was—a cheating bastard, gambling with women until the house won—it was only natural that it had been lost on a stupid bet she had foolishly agreed to. But Shane didn't even have the cunning ladies' man attitude of a guy like Jimmy; he was just plain stupid, and the more time one spent with him, the stupider they were likelier to become. Boys like these were one of the major reasons Rusty had left football early on to invest more time in theater.

"How did I know that she wouldn't?" Rusty prepared Shane for a smart boy's perspective of the circumstances. "Because you picked a horrible night for a date, you idiot."

"Then _why_ did you agree to it?" Shane said to his girlfriend. Rusty cringed imagining Shane on top of Lex, reveling in pleasures better deserved by others. It had obviously happened at least once before, and though Shane was a lucky, lucky man, so Bush had also been; look what's happened to the country since his elections.

"For all I knew, you had something important to say, and you picked tonight for a reason," Lex said. "I was hoping for some kind of insight from you, or _something_. But so far, you've said nothing remotely interesting. Nothing. It's all the same old shit."

"You want insight?" Shane said. "Okay, I'll give you some insight!"

"Can I sit here?" Rusty said, pointing to the empty third of the booth, directly across from Shane and equidistant from Lex. Because Shane's answer wouldn't matter and Lex showed her agreement with a simple smile (which would negate Shane's answer anyway), Rusty took the seat before his opponent could even respond. "This could be history in the making!"

Lex nodded, knowing it to be true. How she'd managed to stand this guy for several weeks now, enough to sleep with him, to have herself violated by his appendage, was a mystery best left unsolved, lest other idiots risk contaminating the gene pool. Rusty scooted closer to Lex, surprisingly without much objection from said idiot, and with her eagerly leaned forward in anticipation of Shane's deep thoughts.


	9. Good Night

Sometime around eleven o'clock, Max and 99 sat on opposite beds in their quiet motel room, each reading a different book with the lamplight from the nightstand. Max was engrossed in a graphic novel about vampires that 99 couldn't care less about, while 99 was enthralled by a romance novel that Max was completely indifferent to. Until tomorrow morning, when 44 and 13 would arrive, along with a vanload of equipment, there was little else to do but talk with each other, and, as had been the case at Starbuck's, bond with the locals.

"_Without_ incriminating ourselves, Max," 99 had reminded him.

KAOS was up to something somewhere in the vicinity, and every minute this issue was set aside for finding out whether or not that single mother would ever find love again in the arms of that handsome rancher was a minute of peace lost. But if the agents out to restore this peace in the world weren't at peace with themselves, what hope was there to begin with? Alas, fascinating though the artists' attention to gory, hellish detail in the slaying of undead bloodsuckers was, Max was beginning to think things were a little _too_ peaceful.

He turned to look at 99, dressed in a pastel pink nightgown with her agent number printed on the left breast. Compared to his generic white T-shirt and boxer shorts, which lacked even basic personalization with his name written on them, she was practically royalty. But how best to start something?

"Okay, I'll be the first to say it," 99 said suddenly, setting her book down. "Why are we sleeping in separate beds?"

"Technically, we haven't slept in them yet," Max said. "And I don't know. But we're professionals, right?" In saying this, and all that it implied, he knew he was destroying his chances with her, but such was the nature of the profession.

"Just because we're professionals doesn't mean we can't sleep side by side. What are we living in, the fifties?"

"Couples slept together in the fifties. Don't believe everything you see on TV, 99."

"_I Love Lucy_ reruns really took their toll on me, didn't they?"

"Well, TV isn't all bad," Max shrugged. He reached for the nightstand, 99 watching him as he did, and grabbed the remote to turn the boob tube on.

The news was on, and a well-dressed reporter was about to tell an apparently very important news item. "Disney TV star and pop princess Valerie Swanson has been—"

"Stupid celebrity bullshit," Max said, pressing the button and making the screen go black. He set the remote back down on the nightstand and turned to look at 99. "Sorry. Did you want to watch something? I'll turn it back on if you want me to."

"Do I look like I care if yet another shallow child star is pregnant? We've got terrorists to worry about."

"Then why are we just sitting here? There's got to be something we can do." He reached for his shoe. "I'll call the Chief, see what he thinks."

"It's like two o'clock in the morning in D.C.! He's probably sleeping!"

"I don't know about you, 99, but I'm _always_ on duty."

"A minute ago you were sitting in your underwear reading about vampires."

"And I'm probably going to have strangely erotic nightmares because of that, but come on, what excuse do we have for our behavior?"

"Uh…" 99 began, "relaxing like this will ease us into well-needed rest which will make us better prepared for work tomorrow?"

"Well said." Max put his shoe back under the bed and while doing so blurted out, "Do you want to sleep with me?"

"What?"

"What?" Max said, pretending what she had heard was only her imagination. "I didn't say anything."

"Okay," 99 said cautiously and bringing her trade paperback back up to her face while Max did the same with his graphic novel and his face. For a minute the two of them feigned indifference to each other, and then she broke their silence as she had before. "All right, I'll bite…No pun intended. What do you mean, strangely erotic nightmares?"

"Oh," Max said, flipping back a few pages to show 99 what he was talking about. "See? These vampire women, they're like, totally naked and stuff. Undead and out for human blood, but, you know, still naked."

"Wow," 99 sighed. "That's low. I mean, the artist, who, by the way, is so _obviously_ male, _obviously_ only drew them like that because the majority of his fanboys are lonely teenagers who can barely even get a woman, just like he once was, and quite possibly still is. Not to mention, those breasts are _way_ too big to be real." She buried her face back in her yawn-inducing, lovey-dovey manufactured trite and added, "I can't believe the crap that turns you men on."

"First of all," Max said, "of course they're fake. She's not real, so how will her boobs ever be? Second, even if she was flesh and blood, why would a vampire get a boob job? It…it makes no sense. And thirdly, you're one to talk, 99, since that crap you're reading is just an exercise in female fantasy fulfillment."

"Hey!" 99 said.

"Before you pull the sexism card, let me just ask: what flaws does the man have?"

"He's…uh…alone?"

"So am I, but at least it makes _sense_ for me. That photo on the cover, he's got rippling biceps and a cowboy hat, and loads of women probably visit him on his ranch, but they're all conveniently taken, aren't they?"

"Mostly, but—"

"But then this equally lonely widow comes along by a friend's suggestion and when she and the rancher first meet, they fall in love, don't they? They have a fling, but then they can't stop thinking about each other, and he's great with her little boy, and eventually they get married, but not before someone else dies tragically. Am I right? Did I ruin the ending for you?"

"_Bastard!_" 99 said, throwing her book across the room until it hit the wall. "And I was just about to get to the sex scene, too!" she said as she crossed her arms and pouted at least semi-jokingly.

"And I'll bet that turns _you_ on, doesn't it?" Max said, feeling smart and stupid for it at the same time.

"They always know exactly how to please a woman!"

"And here I thought this vampire shit was unrealistic," Max said, throwing his book across the room, where it ended up crashing into a second lamp sitting on the table beside the TV and toppling it over. "Whoops," he said as 99 laughed.

"Look," 99 said. "What's my cover for when we go back to school tomorrow?"

"That you're my wife. It makes the most sense."

"Did you mention to Mr. Katten that you were married?"

"No."

"Well, that'll be awkward. When's the last time you had sex?"

"No, _that's_ awkward," Max said, not entirely surprised that she had been so blunt with the question; he deserved to be put into this position after putting forward his own similar query earlier. "And do you mean with someone besides myself, or…?"

"Could we seriously make this any more awkward?" 99 asked.

"Sure. I could describe my technique for dancing with myself."

"No visual aids, please."

"Sound effects?"

"Why would you need sound effects?"

"…Anyway," Max said, rightfully choosing which questions should be answered, "I honestly can't remember the last time I did it. You?"

"Same."

"Really? I find that hard to believe."

"Why? Do you just assume all pretty girls are whores?"

"No. But let's change the subject. Mr. Katten doesn't know I'm living in a motel, or that I have a wife. A fake wife, but a wife nonetheless."

"I, for one, believe in the separation of work and home," 99 said cheerfully in a play on the wisdom of Jefferson. "But in situations like these, I think the occasional exception is warranted."

"How's that?" Max said without any idea of the force he was about to unleash.

In a mad dash, 99 leapt off her bed in a manner that only resulted in falling hard on the carpeted floor. Raising her head and torso somewhat by resting her abs on her arms, she looked up at Max and said, "What are your thoughts on playing a grown-up version of house?"

For no real reason besides going with the flow she'd started, he rolled off his bed, nearly landing on her exposed hands, and joined her on the floor. When he lifted his head to continue the conversation, their faces were less than a foot away, and then Max realized she was looking at him the way he'd been wanting her to ever since he first met several hours ago. Maybe it was all part of the act required by their job, but that was a minor complaint. After all, how many famous Hollywood couples began as co-stars on the set?

"So," Max said. "Is it husband and wife time? Is that what's going on here?"

"We've got to be a convincing couple, don't we?" she replied.

"Do you want me to kiss you?"

"Yes."

A second later, they stretched their heads closer and closer until their lips came together. What should have lasted only a second ended up taking more time than either of them had predicted it would, and it wasn't until almost a full minute had passed that the tongues retreated, followed shortly thereafter by the lips, then the faces, and finally the bodies. The two of them faced each other, leaning against the sides of the beds they had left in a truly exaggerated fashion. An awkward silence, less pressing than the frank sex talk, which admittedly in itself hadn't been all that excruciating, proceeded, and then 99 did her part to end the muting.

"Do you want to have sex?" she said, and Max could tell from that look in her eye that she was dead serious about the act of life.

"Surprisingly, no," Max shrugged. "It would be wrong, and it wouldn't feel right, but I'm not sure which of the two I'm more worried about."

"Good call," she nodded, making her way back up the sheets onto her bed. "I don't either."

"Want me to join you in there?" he asked as she began making herself comfortable under the sheets.

"Yes? No? I don't know, we're married."

"Okay," Max said as he followed her example and reentered the bed he had noisily exited. "Well…good night, then." He reached for the lamp and watched 99 cozy herself with white pillows and blue sheets, waiting for any possible sign not to turn off this light.

"Good night," she smiled, closing her eyes. "Honey."

_Click_.


	10. Compromise

_Wednesday, September 3, 2008_

The next day at 10:15 in the morning, after the quarter-hour snack break had ended and third period was beginning, Holly met the more consistently attractive of her two recurring sets of classmates (the other being drama) in the locker room near the high school gym, where she and the other girls changed in and out of their varied street clothes to their white T-shirt, blue shorts P.E. uniforms.

Last year, when she had been in intermediate dance, Kent's physical education class had been second period, at the same time she'd had dance, which meant that when that period ended and snack was about to start, he could meet her outside the gym. It was a great time for two young lovers who otherwise had no classes together to bond, and also, sadly, to break up a few months later.

"Terra," Holly said, turning the half-dressed classmate to her right. "Do you think I should talk to Kent?"

"You've already made up your mind, haven't you?" Terra replied, throwing on her blue falcon-adorned white T-shirt.

"Yes," Holly said, smiling inside at the prospect. "But I still want to know your opinion."

"Just do what makes you happy. And after sitting between you two in the back seat of Melanie's car on the way home from _Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2_," Terra elaborated, eyeing the auburn-haired girl to Holly's left, who turned upon hearing her name, "I'll just say that neither of you looked happy giving each other the silent treatment."

"Any guy that would rather sneak into that movie than _Pineapple Express_ has to be a real catch," Lex said, now completely in conforming gym class wardrobe. She gave a temporary goodbye that would last only a minute or two until she met her classmates on the field outside.

"He was only seeing the movie because Alexis Bledel was in it. Which is odd, because if he _really_ wanted to support his celebrity crush, he'd _pay_ to see it, don't you think?"

"Well," Melanie added, observing the still-in-underwear Holly with surprise and slight impatience, "it's not so much that she's just a celebrity crush anymore. She's a celebrity crush who reminds him of the only girl who ever loved him." Holly looked at Melanie without making it obvious whether she was annoyed or flattered. "When Kent props in a _Gilmore Girls_ DVD, and I've yet to meet another man who'd admit to doing such a thing, watching Rory eases the pain of losing Holly."

"We get it," an unimportant girl, not from dance, said from the other side of their lockers. "Holly looks like Alexis Bledel."

"Let's change the subject," Melanie said, pulling up her shorts. "Did you guys hear about Valerie Swanson?"

"Yeah, bummer," Holly said. "Bummer" may have been a poor word choice, but as long as it conveyed the message, it was okay. "I hope things turn out all right."

"Who gives a shit?" Terra said. "Since when do _any_ of us give a shit?"

"You didn't hear the news, did you?"

"No. Why, what happened?"

"She was _kidnapped_, Terra."

"_Oh_," Terra said. "Well, in that case, yeah, I hope she's okay."

"You know, for the record, Valerie's not some corporate shill like Miley or the Jonas Brothers," Melanie said. "She's actually got talent. Not to mention a body most of us would kill for."

"Because we have _such_ a hard time getting male attention?" Terra grumbled. "I'll agree with you about the talent thing, I guess, but just because she's got an awesome body doesn't mean _ours_ aren't any good."

"I'm not saying I'd change anything. I'm just saying Valerie sure got lucky in the gene department."

"Whatever," Terra said. She and Melanie were about to walk out, and between them, Holly was still only halfway dressed. "What's taking you so long?"

"Thinking about Kent?" Holly said.

Terra pulled Holly's shorts out of her locker and handed them to her. "Do you always have your pants off when thinking about him?"

Holly laughed sarcastically and took the shorts while Melanie left.

"Okay, my turn to be serious," Terra said. "I got a job offer yesterday at work. This guy offered to _double_ my salary if I joined him and his girls who I served last night at their restaurant down the street. The Fortune Cookie Club."

"I've seen that place," Holly said, now finally dressed and one of only a few girls remaining in the locker room. "Never bothered to check it out, though."

"See, that's the thing. Is getting a better paycheck really worth leaving all my friends who come into Rocky Cola?"

"Shouldn't the answer be that one be obvious?" She began leading Terra outside, opening the locker room door and shortly thereafter the doors to the gym building.

"I know I shouldn't put money over my friends, but there's got to be a way to compromise. Right?"

"Just do what makes you happy," Holly said.

* * *

"_Do you have any idea what he's talking about?_" Max whispered to 99 as the two of them sat at the back of Katten's classroom, watching him give his first third period chemistry lecture of the year.

"You do know that we're not _supposed_ to know what he's talking about, right?" 99 responded. "We're assistants, not students." She paused here to study the overhead notes about which the teacher was talking, and then turned to Max with a question of her own. "You're not seriously confused by this, are you? It's the scientific method, for Pete's sake."

"Who's Pete?"

"Nobody, Max, that's not the point. This is easy material! Are you not paying attention or something?"

"I thought you just said we don't _have_ to pay attention."

"Not to the material, maybe, but to the teacher, at least!"

"Max, 99," Katten said suddenly, immediately putting the couple on the spot and causing the entire class of thirty-plus students to turn around and look at them. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all, sir, carry on," Max said.

"We're sorry," 99 said. "It won't happen again."

"All right, forgive me for this, but why must I refer to you as 99…99?" Katten asked. Several students started talking amongst themselves, but because they weren't technically in the middle of a lecture, the teacher let this slide.

"Oh, it's just part of our role-playing—" Max began, until he was ribbed in the side by 99. "Ow."

"You can call me Elizabeth," 99 smiled.

"You look like an Elizabeth," Katten remarked. "All right. Elizabeth it is, then."

"_Is that your real name?_" Max whispered to her.

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"And why the trench coats?" Katten added.

Max and 99 both looked down at their respective, identical tan coats and then at their partner's, and then they foolishly both answered at the same time. "Comfort," Max said; while 99 said, "Laundry day." They both exchanged glances after this, wondering why they'd let the other speak.

"If you say so," Katten said. He returned to face the overhead display and continued: "Now, as I was saying, after you've developed your hypothesis, you test it, and then…"

A male student at the back of the room, in front of Max and 99 and on her side of the room, leaned toward her and asked, "Can I call you 69?"

"I don't get it," Max said to 99.

Putting her hand on Max's thigh, 99 replied to the boy appropriately. "You could, but if I have a license to kill, you might not want to. That shit is issued by the government, kid; the law is on my side if anyone tries to do anything about it."

The student retreated back into his seat to and rejoined his classmates in Katten's lesson. Through the corner of his eye he watched 99 with a mix of suspicion and fear, but that was the extent of his relationship with the spies from then on. He didn't know they were spies, did he?

"_Do you really have a license to kill?_" Max asked.

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"_Does CONTROL even give out those kind of certifications?_"

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"…_How do you know you haven't just compromised the mission?_"

"Because I'm not you, Max."

"Touché." Max realized 99 still had her hand on his thigh. He informed her of this strangely unwelcome presence, but her response was all but expected. Only in their situation could home and work become so entwined.

"You're not acting like a husband," she said. "Most husbands would be _happy_ to be getting this kind of contact with their wives." Her fingers moved up and down in a wave, creating a slight tickle that was uncalled for even among the most notoriously fornicating demographic in a classroom where second semester biology students learned the exact processes that took place during those times. "Can we just focus on the mission now, please?"

"Okay, but you're making it very hard."

"I'm sorry, and you're welcome."


	11. Rusty's Woe

With the ringing of the bell, fourth period ended and lunch could begin. The intermediate (3-4) drama class was exiting their underground theater of a classroom, picking up the backpacks they had piled up at the corner of the room nearest the door leading into the hallway. Rusty found his red backpack among all the others and threw the straps around his shoulders, a convenient way to carry the bag in spite of the fact that he and Claire and Holly and John all ate just outside, just thirty feet directly down the hall on the steps of the administration building. He glanced to the side and saw Tom talking to a tall, slender kid wearing a _Ride The Lightning_ T-shirt and cream-colored cargo pants still rooted in his seat, but being young and hormonal, his attention was quickly sidetracked by the sight of Claire walking out the door, green backpack in hand, jeans looking great on her, as always.

"Rusty," Josh said, walking up to him from the small stage. The student director—one of several advanced drama students that aided the _real_ drama teacher, the ever-balding (but never bald) Mr. Bowman working at his desk at the opposite corner—crossed his arms, hiding the humorous statement on his white shirt, and looked down on Rusty in a way he never had before. "Can we talk for a minute? Outside?"

"What about?" Rusty replied, eyeing the doorknob.

"I think you know that already," Josh said.

"I do?"

"I'll see you in five minutes," he said with a sigh, patting Rusty on the upper arm. He was obviously disappointed with him in something, but what? Damn hormones, impairing his ability to figure this out.

Following shortly behind Josh, Rusty left the drama room and met Claire on the stairway leading down into the quad.

"Hey," Claire said. "What's the matter? You look tense."

"I don't know what's the matter. Josh hasn't told me yet."

"I noticed he was giving you some kind of look during class."

"Do you think I should be worried?"

"Rusty, as long as you have porn to watch and pot to sell, I don't think a guy like you has anything to worry about."

"How about the fact that I have _porn_ instead of an actual _girl_?"

"Yeah, well," Claire said as she stood up and readied herself to enter the line to buy a slice of pizza from the cart nearby, "sex is overrated anyway. Why do you think I haven't had any since I broke up with Jimmy?" She left before he had any time to answer, but as she was walking towards the cart, Holly and John took her place on the stairway beside Rusty.

As she placed her navy blue backpack at her feet and opened it, John Gomez-Cavanaugh placed his arm around her shoulder, a cue for her to pause from pulling the brown paper bag out and instead run her hand through his mid-length black hair and nuzzle each other. She smiled in pleasure but nevertheless removed his hand from her baby blue blouse and resumed removing her lunch bag from the backpack and the plastic-wrapped, well-vegetated sandwich from the paper bag. Meanwhile John turned to Rusty and pointed out what Claire before him had also noticed.

"Something wrong, Rusty?" he asked.

"Well, for starters, there's no need to rub it in everybody's face, you two."

"Oh, Rusty…" Holly said, in her usual sympathetic tone. "You can't get any, we know."

"And watching you two isn't helping."

"So what's really bothering you?"

"Josh isn't too happy with me for some reason."

"What did you do?" John asked.

"If I knew, I'd tell you." At this moment, Claire returned from the line, pepperoni pizza in hand, smiling in the presence of her friends. Rusty figured now that she was here and Holly was, too, and Josh hadn't yet come to exact his revenge, it was the best time to talk about what needed to be talked about. "So, Claire, did you notice Kent was wearing a Metallica shirt today?"

Claire swallowed the piece of pizza in her mouth and glared at Rusty. "That bastard."

"_Hey!_" Holly said, expectedly.

"Don't act so surprised, Holly," Claire said. "Kent must have overheard somewhere that I like Metallica, so he's probably pretending to like them in the hopes that _I'll_ notice him liking them. He figures if _I_ find him agreeable or likeable somehow, that I'll say something to _you_ guys about it, and we'll be talking about him. That's all he wants, to think we're talking about him. He's _weak_. He can't stand to be forgotten."

"Maybe," John nodded. "Or, maybe he doesn't even _know_ you like Metallica, and he got into them on his own."

"He only likes Garbage because he found about them through Holly!" Claire said, which was admittedly half-true. "Why should the case be any different here?"

"You and Kent both like Nine Inch Nails," Rusty added. He looked to the side and watched Holly growing noticeably more uncomfortable; putting the tension he had with regards to Josh to shame. "We'd barely met him when we found that out. Believe it or not, Claire, it's possible for him to like the same things we do without knowing we like them, too."

Claire laughed. "Give me a break. He first got into Nine Inch Nails around the time _With Teeth_ came out. He jumped on a bandwagon, when _lots_ of people were discovering NIN."

"How is that a bad thing, exactly?"

"Because Claire says so," John offhandedly said to Rusty.

"Yeah, I got that one, John."

"And now _Death Magnetic_ is on the way," Claire said, "and Kent wants to seem like the kind of guy who's been waiting for it for a _long_ time. If you ask me, discovering a band when everybody else is just makes you look pathetic and incapable of thinking for yourself." Claire looked at Kent's ex-girlfriend, followed by John and Rusty a second later, and saw Holly biting her lip. "What?" she demanded.

Holly sighed and pushed some hair out of her face, but not before putting her sandwich down. "Listen, guys. I know this might seem kind of radical, but…I've decided that I'm going to talk to Kent."

To less surprise to Rusty than to Claire, John took this rather well. "That's great," he said with an awkward but respectful smile.

"Some boyfriend _you_ are!" Claire shouted.

"Hey, she can talk to whoever she wants. I trust her."

"Around _Kent_?! John, for god's sake, she took her pants off for this guy!"

"Okay, first of all, it was a skirt," John reminded her, "and second, Kent didn't even _look_."

"Kent wasn't too enthused about second base, either," Rusty added. "Holly offered to be a very naughty girl for him, and he _refused_. I don't know if that makes him more or less of a man than the rest of us, but shit, how embarrassing is it that Kent—_Kent!_—has gotten more ass than _me_?"

Claire grumbled and threw what remained of her pizza onto the concrete stairs. Rolling her eyes and turning away from her friends, she said, "You're making a big mistake." A second later, she growled and forced herself back into the line at the lunch cart to buy a new slice of pizza.

"Rusty," Josh said, appearing suddenly at the foot of the stairway. "It's time."

Rusty nodded and cautiously made his way around his friends down to Josh, who motioned him to walk to the other end of the quad, near the science building. "What is it, man? What did I do?"

"Don't play dumb with me. You sold your shit to my sister!"

"No, I sold my _weed_ to your sister. If I'd sold my shit to your sister, this would be a very different conversation."

"You think this is _funny_? She got _arrested_, for what _you_ sold her!"

"No, she got _arrested_ because she was stupid enough to get _caught_."

"She got caught because _you_ were stupid enough to sell her your weed!"

"But, Josh…" Rusty said, laughing nervously but with a slight feeling of superiority, "you buy weed from me, too! I mean, not all the time, but you _do_! And now you're telling me your sister can't have what _she_ wants?"

"I don't want Mila exposed to anything you could give her."

"So I guess that means I can't ask her out then, huh?"

"You're pushing it, Rusty."

"No, that would require me to ask her out first."

"_Rusty!_"

"_Jesus!_" He cowered just enough to keep his masculinity intact. "When did _you_ become a hypocrite, man? You're the most rational, responsible guy any of us know. Why can't _she_ have it if _you_ can?"

"You don't know her, Rusty. Mila is…not like me. She's impressionable and prone to bad influence, and I'm worried that if you keep giving her things she shouldn't be having, her entire life will go downhill. I'm talking sex, harder drugs, booze, you know, all that. You're lucky this was her first offense and they dropped the charges."

Rusty laughed, though with less enthusiasm than before. "You've become a believer in reefer madness, dude."

"Hey, if the politicians get off their money piles and legalize it, then I don't care if she smokes it at all. But as long as it's forbidden, I don't Mila anywhere near it."

"Have you told her this yet? You and your parents?"

"Oh, we had quite a discussion about it last night," Josh said.

"Well, I'm sorry, Josh," Rusty shrugged, "but the customer is always right. If Mila wants some and she's got the cash for it, I'll give it to her whether you like it or not. Now, can we please stop talking about this? We're on school grounds, remember?"

"Fair enough," Josh said. He began walking away, presumably to be with his girlfriend, but both he and Rusty were surprised when Lex, dressed in a fiery red top that just barely hinted at her cleavage, appeared and stopped Josh in his tracks. "Lex?" Josh asked with obvious rhetoric.

"_Lex?_" Rusty gasped, running up to be beside Josh and hear what the girl had to say.

"Hi, boys," she said, clearly in flirting mode. Holy damn. "I just thought I'd let you know that I broke up with Shane last night."

"Good for you," Josh said with a fair amount of indifference not so much to the news but to the girl giving it to him. "Rusty and I aren't exactly the best of friends right now, but I think we can both agree that Shane is a complete and utter douchebag. I rarely find that term appropriate in any circumstance, but if there was ever a person who required such a label, Shane _is_ that person."

"So what are you doing here, with us?" Rusty asked, his excitement hard to contain.

"Josh, are you still seeing Vanessa?"

"_Oh, come on!_"

"Yes, I am," Josh said, politely ignoring Rusty's dissatisfaction. "And don't think that just because you're a stone cold fox that I'm going to leave her for you, because I love her, damn it."

"Do you?" Lex said, tipping herself forward just enough to let Josh get a shadowy glimpse of what lay underneath her shirt. _Damn it!_ "Do you really?"

"_Yes_," Josh and Rusty said in unison, though with markedly different intentions.

"For someone who's not so proud to have her older sister stripping in Vegas, you're doing a good job following in her footsteps, Lex. If you _don't_ want to inherit her reputation as a slut, I suggest you clean up your act a little."

"What he means is," Rusty said, "you could be with any man, and this is your chance to finally be with someone of substance. Sure, Josh is smart and handsome, but he's unavailable, so you'll just have to settle for someone else. Like, for example—"

"Rusty, I like you, but only as a friend."

"But we were _flirting_ last night!"

While Rusty and Lex were arguing, Josh took advantage of the window they had created to leave them and join fellow student director and left-wing brunette Vanessa back on the opposite side of the quad.

"Yeah, we were, but only because I needed a distraction from Shane. And besides, everyone knows you're in love with Claire."

"So? We can go out, or we can just have lots of mindless sex with no strings attached. I don't care, I just want to _be_ with someone!"

"I'll think about it," Lex said, turning to walk away.

"I hate the friend zone," Rusty sighed. Heading back towards the stairs to an intently watching Holly, Claire, and John, he continued, "_Why am I always stuck in the friend zone?!_"


	12. The Hunter And The Wolf

Ten minutes into lunch, and everyone at the circular table near the cafeteria entrance was incredibly uncomfortable. Tom sat next to Mike who sat next to Rick who sat next to Iris who, with the addition of a fifth chair where, barring Kent's arrival, one wasn't necessary, sat next to Mila. No one had said a word since Mila had joined their table—although Mike let out a small burp—nor had they touched their food. Finally, Mila did the honorable thing and revealed her reason for sitting with them.

"Rick invited me to his birthday party this weekend," she said, sticking a spork into whatever it was the "chefs" had concocted today. She took a bite and swallowed, but it had barely made its way down her throat when Iris nudged her in the arm.

"_Why?_" Iris asked. It was hard to tell whom she was referring to with the question, but Rick figured it was directed at him, and responded with the truth.

"Iris, she's a nice person. What's wrong with inviting a new person to my party? We did it two years ago with Kent." ("That was because of me," Tom said solemnly, ensuring the brat didn't take credit for his work.) "Now he's got some friends, and Mila looks like the kind of person who could use some, too." He tried to smile at the black-haired girl, but the reddish-haired one didn't take kindly to it, and he wisely backed off.

"Rick, Kent isn't here. And we may be friends, but ever since he met Holly, it's just become more and more obvious that he belongs with _them_, not us. But this isn't about that, this is about you inviting Little Miss Pothead here to your birthday party, and _her_ sitting at _our_ table."

"Yeah, it's not like I'm sitting right next to you or anything," Mila said, taking another bite.

"Little Miss Pothead?" Mike said. "Did you make that one up, Iris, or did you hear it from someone else?"

"Someone else," Iris said, and considering the sheer ingenious of the nickname, there couldn't have been a safer response. She examined the "food" on her plastic lunch tray, and then looked at Mila and then at Rick again. She'd lost her appetite already. Little Miss Pothead, on the other hand, was living up to her newfound title and digging into what was pre-established after but a single day of high school as little more than crap with artificial coloring and flavor.

"I'm surprised word's gotten around _this_ quickly," Mila remarked, by now making disposable plastic sporks appear almost fashionable.

"Hell of way to start high school, huh? My Dad's a cop, you know."

"Small world. My uncle works for the Bureau of Prisons."

"And now _I'm_ surprised. Why aren't we better friends?"

"Because I'm not my uncle and you're not your dad?"

"How about because you don't know each other that well yet?" Tom said. "That, and Rick." Rick silently asked Tom "_what the hell_" but did nothing to deny the fact that he had two women fighting over him.

"There's no reason you can't _both_ come," Rick said to Iris, placing his hand on hers in an apparent gesture of romantic reassurance. She enjoyed his touch, his fingers wrapped neatly around her palm, but it would take more than a simple statement to convince her. "And there's definitely no reason to get jealous, Iris. If it makes you feel any better, when it comes time for your next birthday, you can invite any hot guy you want, I won't care."

Iris pulled her hand away from Rick and glared back at him. "So you _admit_ that Mila's hot?!"

"Rick doesn't have any control over how I look," Mila said.

"I know," Iris said, "but everyone finds different things attractive, and he just admitted that he likes yours as well as mine. Unless, of course, he's grown _tired_ of mine."

"Give me a break, I haven't even _seen_ yours yet," Rick said. "But that's not my fault, is it?"

"We are _not_ having that conversation here."

"It's been two years, Iris! There's nowhere left to go but _there_!"

"Actually, I'd say marriage and then the baby carriage both come after that," Mike said. "But I suppose those steps don't really apply to people our age. Not here in the twenty-first century, anyway."

"Rick, how can you even _think_ I'd consider having sex with you when Mila is in the picture? That's not a shot against you personally, Mila, I mean _any_ other girl that's not me. Whether you know it or not, whether you're willing to admit it or not, you _are_ attracted to other girls, Rick, and if you want me to take that huge risk of letting you inside me, you _better_ be fully committed."

"So you _admit_ you're willing to take that risk?" Rick nodded and grinned. "I knew it."

"You're a self-centered pig," Iris said, rising angrily out of her seat and storming towards the door. Mila, for whatever reason, decided to follow, and when Iris turned to see that such an event was actually occurring, the two of them both lost sight of where they were going, and Mila's tray spilled forward all over 99's trench coat, which then caused 99 to make a gravity-proving mess of the food on her own tray. Casually, Mila glanced at the man standing beside 99—Max—and it was her turn to growl with malice. Mila's accident and subsequent fury only added fuel to Iris's fire, and after doing what Mila couldn't and throwing her food into the trash, she and Mila made like Elvis and left the building, allowing Max and 99 (who borrowed a spare chair from a neighboring table) to join Rick and his friends and fill the void the girls had left behind.

"Here, you can have mine," Max said, offering 99 his lunch.

"Thanks, Max," she smiled back at him. She took the food—which seemed insultingly more edible (it even came with an apple!) than what the others had been eating—and began chowing down.

"Who is _this_?" Rick gasped, in awe of 99, though perhaps not simply because she was beautiful but because not one, but _two_ beautiful girls had just run away from him.

"My partner," Max said. 99 gave him a funny look. "By which I mean, my wife." The funny look went away.

"Does she have a name?" Mike asked.

"Elizabeth," Max and 99 said simultaneously.

"I could've guessed," Tom remarked. "You look like an Elizabeth."

"So why are _you_ sitting with us?" Mike said. "Did Rick invite you two to his party, too?"

"No, we just needed a place to sit," Max said. "And we kind of know this guy," he said, pointing to a still-recovering Rick, "so, yeah."

"So is she any good in bed?" Rick said, nearly causing 99 to choke on her food.

"How the hell should I know?"

"Well, he's definitely married," Tom said with a small laugh. "But seriously, Rick, are you actually _surprised_ that Iris and Mila left? When you make comments like that? It's a wonder you even have a girlfriend at all."

"I should've expected this when I knew we'd be working on a high school campus," 99 sighed. Regardless, she bit into her apple and took minor joy in the sustenance it provided. "Max, do you think we could sit somewhere else? Away from this kid?" She pointed the index finger from her free hand at Rick, who, as it turns out, _was_ surprised.

"Or, Rick could just leave," Max said.

"But then we might give him the opportunity to follow Iris and Mila," Mike suggested. "Do we really want to let that happen?"

"They won't let him near them," Tom said. "But I see your point."

"Guys, I'm sitting right here," Rick said.

"The Golden Rule must not mean a lot to you, does it?" 99 asked.

"You say that like it's the _only_ rule he doesn't respect," Max said. "By the way, you might not want to open that juice carton. Just sayin'." 99 tossed him the mercifully unopened cardboard pint of orange juice and he then tossed it into the nearest trash can. Upon hearing the carton crash down into the constantly growing pile, Max suddenly looked stunned. "Or was that the _milk_?" He turned around and watched 99 slap herself on the forehead. "Sorry, honey."

"Can I ask what exactly greeting cards salespeople are doing working as assistants for a high school science teacher?" Tom asked. "Just sayin'."

"I don't sell greeting cards," 99 clarified. "I sing."

"_Really?_" Max said, his surprise surprising everyone.

"See, that's why married men don't get any," Tom said to no one in particular.

"Shut up, Tom," Rick grumbled. "You and Oriel should be champions between the sheets by now. Until you actually _do_ it, you have no right to tell others how to get things done."

"Did I mention that mutual respect between a man and a woman is also important?" Tom added. "I shouldn't have to say this, but, uh, hint, hint."

"I like you," 99 said to Tom. "Now, my singing…"

"You can hold that thought, Liz," a voice familiar to Tom and Max but not so much to the others said, appearing in the space between Rick and Mike's seats, her hands resting on either one's chair. Her black blouse matched her dark blue jeans, and she was leaning forward, rather deliberately exposing some skin for those at the table. As Tom knew best—second among this group only to the willfully absent Kent—this seemingly flirtatious act was more than likely a sly setup for a harsh lesson, and from a mile away, anyone (except perhaps the one it was intended for) could have guessed who was about to be taught. "Hello, everyone." She grinned with anticipation.

"Samara, right?" Max asked.

"That's right," she replied. "So I overheard the people at this table talking about _sex_. Ooh, exciting."

"Uh-oh," Rick said. He'd never met Samara before, though he'd heard short but fear-inducing descriptions of her from Tom and Kent ever since last year.

"Right again," Samara said, the imposing blond looking down on the boy two years her junior. "You seem to think you can juggle two girls at once, don't you, son? Speaking as a non-virgin, and more importantly, as a woman, let me just say," and then she abruptly cut herself off to slap Rick upward across the face. ("_Ow!_") "Your girlfriend seems to be the only thing keeping you in line, buddy, and if you dare to chew off the leash she's got you tied to, you'll get another girlfriend, sure, but at what cost? It won't be lasting or meaningful in the least, I can tell you that, and if it's with Josh's little sister, you'll just be arming a time bomb, my friend, and not the kind that breaks the lock on her pants. Not only will Josh make sure you keep your hands to yourself, Mila's affection for a certain harmless plant that gave this country our last two presidents is bound to put a rift in your relationship with your parents and sister, who, the acknowledgment of the existence of human sexuality aside, are stuck in a perfect 1950's way of life. Speaking of the acknowledgment of the existence of human sexuality, did I mention," and she slapped Rick upside the face a second time. ("_Ow!_") "Stop staring at my cleavage, and start pretending you never cared for it in the first place like every other man who's too intimidated to ask me out."

"I wasn't staring at your cleavage," Rick said, making rare eye contact with the opposite sex.

"I hope you realize that I wasn't encouraging lying."

'You're not making any sense!"

"And I suppose when I leave, you're just going to sigh and lament your failure to understand the complicated creature that is woman, right?"

Rick's jaw dropped while her arms crossed, and then he swallowed and looked away from Samara and towards the other side of the table, at Max and 99.

"Have you been spying on us?" 99 asked.

"How else do you expect me to do what I do?" Samara replied. "But don't feel insulted by it, Liz. I spy on everybody I can, and where sense needs to be taught," she knocked Rick on the back of the head, "I simply walk out of my corner and into theirs, and dole out doses of the recipe my sister crafted but I've since perfected."

"I'm going to guess you don't have a lot of friends, either."

"No, I do, they're just reluctant to admit they consider me as such."

"Would you _please_ just _go away_?!" Rick shrieked.

"Rick—and cherish this moment, because I'm not going to refer to you by your Christian name the next time we meet—if you ever want to see a vagina that doesn't belong to a whore on a computer screen, I strongly suggest you shut your mouth."

Rick used his hands to pound his head on the white tabletop. "How do you expect me to cherish a moment like _that_?!" he moaned, throwing his arms up to visually illustrate the frustration he was being caused.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, folks, I have a soon-to-be ex-girlfriend to inform of my services. Enjoy your lunch." Grinning, she exited the cafeteria in the same way Iris and Mila had earlier. After turning several corners, she found the two freshmen sitting together on the ground against a wall, conversing about their boy troubles and reveling in naiveté. She interrupted them rudely as she had done to their troubling boy minutes before and introduced herself with all the flair her greetings usually brought. "Hello, there, girls."

"Who are you?" Iris said, sitting in the junior's shadow.

"Samara Pearse."

"_Oh no_," the freshmen gasped.

"You know her?" Iris said, turning to look at Mila.

"Yeah, I see her at my brother's plays all the time," Mila nodded. "Nothing prepares you for this. She's a scary bitch."

"She's standing _right here_, Mila!" Iris said, jumping up.

"She doesn't care," Mila said with a sigh.

"I'm crying on the inside," Samara nodded, smiling on the outside like a lioness about to tear her jaws into an antelope.

"Uh…really?" Iris said. "Shame on you, Mila."

"Actually, shame on your boyfriend, Iris."

"How do you know my name? Has Tom or Kent mentioned me? What _about_ my boyfriend? Is he hitting on _you_, too?! That son of a—"

"Don't worry, I tightened your leash, I straightened him out, I put the balls in your court, whatever metaphor you find appropriate, I did it, Little Red."

"Little Red?"

"Riding Hood, yes. You might want to retroactively treasure my calling you by your real name, because from now on, I'm both the hunter and the wolf, bitch."

"_I didn't call you anything! She did!_" Iris said, pointing down at Mila.

"That's true, but she didn't have the opportunity to strengthen a statement of her superiority over you in most every conceivable way by adding a completely unnecessary but undeniably funny expletive to the continuation of the metaphor that is the basis of your well-deserved pet name."

"You lost me."

"What the hell is your problem?" Mila said.

"The world, Jackie. The world is my problem." With this final statement, Samara walked away, and everyone involved with the Iris-Mila debacle could sleep a little better tonight now that she'd done her job. She deserved to be paid for her efforts, but no one wanted to openly encourage such discipline.


	13. 13 And 44

Walking the several blocks north and then east, down the main street of Foothill, back to the motel, Max and 99 were suddenly stopped midway through a flirtatious conversation by a nondescript turquoise van rushing past them, gunshots echoing from the inside. The two of them both reached for their hips, tempted to pull out the handguns all agents were issued and bring justice if necessary (KAOS?!), but then the van backed up to them, and they realized the gunshots were coming the stereo system, blasting "Paper Planes" by M.I.A. rather than caps in asses, and that the occupants were old friends and colleagues, agents 44 and 13.

"Hop in," 13, the richly redheaded woman sitting in the drivers' seat said, as the rear doors opened. Max and 99, being typical Americans who valued comfort over exercise, shrugged and leaped into the highly technological back half of the van, on a carpeted floor. 44, a raven-haired agent of mixed white and Chinese descent with glasses over his nearsighted eyes, sat in the seat nearest the back of the front passenger seats, dressed in a trench coat like his fellow agents. Several briefcases and boxes of devices that may or may not prove useful littered the carpet, while walls of computer screens and accompanying keyboards dominated the interior sides of the vehicle.

"Finally," 99 said, helping Max join her in taking a seat beside 44, who had an expression like he wasn't qualified or ready for what was about to be undertaken. "Something happens."

As 13 began driving the couple of blocks to the motel, Max and 99 casually glanced at each other before letting go of their partner's hands and turning to 44. This apparently was enough for 44. "You two are seeing each other now, aren't you?" And he thought he was underqualified?

The car screeched to a halt, and somebody in a neighboring car could be heard yelling "_asshole!_" to 13. She turned around to look at Max and 99, and said, "Are you?"

"Well…" 99 began, seeing the rage in 13's eyes. "_Yes_. But only since yesterday. And can you blame us? We're playing husband and wife, after all."

"I don't want to hear about it," 13 said sternly.

"Because it's unprofessional?" Max said.

"Yeah, Max," 13 said with a grumble, continuing the minimal drive that had to be completed. "Because it's unprofessional."

"I think there's more to it than that," 99 said, peeking into the front of the van.

"86 used to date 13," 44 said simply. 99 quickly turned to look at him in disbelief. "What?" he said as 99 stared. "You think dating in the workplace is limited to the office?"

Returning to her seat—all too briefly, which was a damn shame, considering the strange comfort of the cramped seating inside the rear of the van—99 then turned to Max with a logical quandary. "How did I not know this?"

"What difference does it make?" Max said. "We broke up. We're not seeing each other anymore. We don't look at each other the same way."

"Who broke up with whom?"

"He broke up with _me_, 99," 44 reassured her, pulling into the motel parking lot and doing what vehicles do in such locations. "He broke up with me. There. Now you know. Enough has been said. We've got a job to do, people, so let's just get started." She pressed the button that flew the back doors open, and the three agents crawled back outside. The doors closed with a mirroring cue, and with their feet on the ground, the four agents in total, all dressed in tan trench coats, met each other on the sidewalk.

Saying numbers and shaking hands, the tension between agents was already beginning to show. "Ow," Max said as 13's hand suffocated his. Upon release, he said, "With a grip like that, maybe _you_ should be a field agent instead. Ow."

"I didn't grip you _that_ hard," 13 said, rolling her eyes.

"Well, you used to," Max shrugged, and 99 shot her gaze away from 44 and looked directly at him as soon as she heard him say it.

"So, what's your field name?" 99 said, offering her elegant hand to 13 to shake.

"Brianna," 13 nodded.

"It works," 99 said. "Call me Elizabeth."

"You look like an Elizabeth," 13 said.

"Yours?" Max asked 44.

"Nobody's going to be seeing me except you guys," 44 said. "Trust me, I won't need one."

"Not unless you get hungry," 13 said. Walking backwards initially, she began issuing orders stemming more from her slight seniority than any perceived higher ranking within CONTROL. "I'll go to the front desk to get our room key. You stay here and start unpacking, 44. Max, the minute we finish unpacking I want a full update on the latest information. And 99—watch yourself."

"That's right, you're new here," 44 said to 99. "How many missions is this for you?"

"They say the third time's the charm," 99 replied, glancing at Max. "That seems to be true so far."

"You know, I've done my research—haven't retained a lot of it, but hey, this is high school—and I've worked my ass off to get something out of Katten over the summer," Max said, "and I'm still lost. How can KAOS _possibly_ benefit from a plant growth formula? What are they going to do, photosynthesize us to death?"

"Hey, they have hobbies just like us. Maybe this isn't even an _evil_ plot, per se. Maybe their boss just wants to make the perfect greenhouse, or the ultimate garden, or something, and he's going about it the only way he knows how—secretly. Covertly."

"Don't be naïve, 99," 13 said, unlocking the door to the room she and 44 would be sharing, neighboring Max and 99's. "That's just stupid."

"And what if I'm right?"

"You're not," 13 said, opening the door and making way for 44 and the box he was carrying to enter.

"That judgment seems awfully premature," 99 said. "Don't you think the scientific method describes our job well? We take what we see, analyze it, and then make the appropriate response to further our cause and the good of mankind. And so far, _that's_ my analysis of our current situation."

"What kind of _idiot_ would send agents out here because of a goddamn plant growth formula?"

"You don't like the mission, you can quit," 99 said, crossing her arms.

"I was referring to KAOS," 13 scowled. "And your nonsensical idea."

"Uh, ladies...." Max said, raising a hand. "I think 44 and I could use some help with these boxes." He lifted the box at his feet and followed 44 into the motel room.

"Until we're _absolutely_ certain," 13 said, throwing a lightweight cardboard box of cables into 99's arms, "you assume lives are at stake, 99. I'm sorry if the world can't live up to your optimistic standards, but keep it to yourself. In this business, you're _dead_ if you make a mistake like that."

99 grumbled and carried the box into the room.

"Hey, go easy on the girl," 44 said, picking up the beginning of the end of the boxfuls of portable surveillance technology to be installed in the room. No room service for this crowd, no sir. "Just because she's with 86 now doesn't mean everything she thinks, says and does has to be subject to your criticism."

"I'm above jealousy, 44," 13 said as she wrapped her arms around the second-to-last box. "The mission is my concern. And frankly, 99's inexperience both with her job and with Max is going to slow us all down."

"I can _hear_ you," 99 said, Max standing beside her as the other two agents entered the room.

"No shit," 13 said, setting the box down in the pile.

"Then what would you like me to do?" 99 said. "By all means, tell the inexperienced one how to do it right."

"Experience is earned, not taught. So _earn it_."

"And what do I need to know about Max?"

"Why he's the only one here being referred to by his real first name?" 44 said, largely to himself, because even in the professional world, girls wouldn't listen to him. "Elizabeth? Brianna? Are those real or fake? _Nobody knows!_"

"Try answering that question yourself," 13 said to 99. "Go on, try it."

"Okay," 99 said, studying Max. "Um…wait a minute, I think I got it. He's sort of clumsy, a little deluded, somewhat self-absorbed…you're worried he's going to get me—sorry, _us_—killed, aren't you?"

"No, 99, your naïveté will handle that," 13 said. "His flaws are just going to make it happen quicker. 99, the problem with Max is—and I know he wouldn't tell _you_ this—is, he has a reputation for going behind people's backs."

"That's our _job_," Max argued. "We deceive and bullshit people for the good of our country and mankind. Right?"

"Yeah, we do, but every once in a while we slip and start bullshitting our friends. Hong Kong, Max?"

"I slipped, but I wasn't bullshitting anyone, 13. There was just a slight misunderstanding between me and the baddies that time. The wrong information got leaked, and I blew up the wrong building."

"You're goddamn lucky there was nobody inside," 13 snapped. "_And_ that your lawyer took a liking to you. Somehow, against all odds, it seems like _every_ woman does. Do you know the consequences for killing innocent civilians, 99?"

"_Yes_," 99 said. "But I'm not going to be making those kinds of mistakes."

"That's what Max said. Look how close he came."

"I'm not like Max," 99 rebutted. "No offense, honey," she said to him. "And you're not perfect, either, 13."

"Can we just start unpacking?" 44 said. He reached for the nearest box and opened it up, and began pulling out the contents and setting them on the bed closest to the door. "13, some help, please?"

"Watch your back, 99," 13 advised, pointing at the boxes at Max and 99's feet while she grabbed one and then some more near her own. "Close the door, 44. We don't want people knowing the kind of things we have in here."

"What kinds of things _do_ we have in here?" Max said, examining a miniature, foldable computer, more like a portable video game console than any conventional computer. He turned to 44 at the door, and 13 nodded, as if to confirm Max's suspicions that yes, the nerdy-looking guy (and only minority) within the group was, in fact, their primary technical advisor. "Or should I not even bother asking?" 13 shook her head. "Okay, then. I'll let you guys handle it."


	14. Rocky II

"Good tucker here," Holly said in her Australian accent as she browsed the menu, sitting across from her father, Mark, at a lower-level table in Rocky Cola. She smiled at her biggest inspiration, the one who'd persuaded her to follow in his veterinary footsteps, and then at a redshirt Rusty who approached their table ready to take their preliminary orders. "It's been a while, hasn't it?" she asked the waiter.

"I see you almost every day at school," Rusty remarked, "but yeah, Holly, it's been a while since you ate here last. Are you two ready to order your drinks?"

"Yes. Could I get a brownie?" Mark asked, referring to a bottle of beer, although considering the company he was in, the request could have easily been for a pot-laced doughy meal instead. Fortunately, Rusty and most of the rest of Holly's friends had more or less caught on to the true meanings behind the Snow family's Australianisms.

"Uh, Holly?" Rusty said hesitantly as he turned to her.

"He wants a beer," she replied. "And I'll have a water, please."

"You know, you don't _have_ to speak in that accent all the time."

"So I talk like a Yank when I'm with you guys and like an Aussie when I'm with my Dad, what's so difficult about that?"

"Except you _are_ a Yank—"

"Only half," Holly corrected him, "and you know we don't talk about that half."

"Yeah, I know, but—"

"But what? Where's the complication?"

Rusty sighed. "You know accents are a turn-on, though, right?"

"I thought you weren't attracted to me anymore."

Mark gave Rusty a suspicious look. He wasn't too judgmental about his daughter's taste in men, due in no small part to Holly's astounding excellent overall track record (not just with the two boys she'd been with thus far, but also with life in general), but Rusty could sense the underlying warning in his gaze.

"I'm not," Rusty reassured the both of them. "But when you start talking like that, it becomes very hard to—let me rephrase that—it reminds me of how lonely I am."

"Why don't you ask Terra out?"

"Holly, do you know what I have at home? I keep a list of every girl I know in my desk in my room—dozens of girls, some of which I've known since _preschool_—and that list is divided into two parts: Girls Who Are Willing To Go Out With Me, and Girls Who _Aren't_. That first part hasn't had a _single_ name added to it since I started keeping track! What kind of world do we live in where a guy like Kent damn near pops his cherry with a girl like you, but I can't even get _close_ to a girl without drawing their ire and repulsion?"

Blushing at the mention of Kent's name, Holly nevertheless had the composure to react sensibly to Rusty's situation. "First of all, calm down. Second, you went out with Claire and I in middle school, how does that _not_ count? Thirdly, and I can't stress this enough, you're a _great_ guy, Rusty. You're funny, you're handsome, you're a real catch, mate!"

Having calmed down, Rusty then responded to the rest of Holly's message. "High school dating isn't the same as middle school dating. When you're twelve or thirteen, the opposite sex stops being the broccoli mocking you on the dinner plate, and starts becoming the ice cream you can't wait to put your mouth all over when dessert comes around. And when it comes to ice cream, people will take anything."

"That's not true," Mark said.

"But just a few years later, you start to know what flavors you like best. You weed out all the rest, and of course everybody tries to get the best and most popular as quickly as possible anyway, until eventually the only flavors left are the ones nobody else wants. And so they just sit there in the freezer, futilely awaiting the day when someone will pick them out and try them out for the hell of it, but by then, the expiration date will have long since passed, leaving a horrible taste in the mouth of any idiot who dares to try them. They spend their last days melting into nonexistence in the trash can, never to be remotely appreciated by another living soul."

Holly and Mark clapped quietly upon hearing Rusty's metaphor. They were both smiling, and clearly found humor in the ludicrous dissertation he'd just shared with them. It was admittedly a gigantic stretch of a possibility that he'd ever be _that_ lonely, but damned if it didn't _feel_ like he might.

"Bravo," Holly said, surprisingly in her default American tongue. "But that's not going to happen to you, Rusty." Pointing behind her friend, she added, "Oh, and your boss is watching, so it might be a good idea to head to another table."

Rusty nodded and left without daring to turn around.

* * *

Meanwhile, sitting at a booth on the upper level near where Lex and Shane had sat on their date the previous night, the numbered, trench-coated spies were sharing a table and discussing business.

"Considering the nature of our work," 44 asked, "is a public restaurant like this _really_ the best location to talk about it?" Nervously, he lifted himself up and did a quick study of the people enjoying their meals all around them. "Any _one_ of these people could be a KAOS agent!"

"I don't think so," Max replied. "I haven't seen any since I got here, and I've been here for months now."

"And you, Liz?" 13 said.

"What makes you think I could accomplish in a day what Max has had all this time to do?" 99 said. "Besides, he and I already talked about this. They're secret agents just like us—"

"If you don't watch that mouth of yours, you'll no longer be one of 'us.'"

"…so they _should_ be hard to find. Hell, they might even be _better_ than us. At staying hidden, anyway."

"Do you want a shovel?"

"What?"

"For the hole you're digging?"

"Brianna, I'm _great_ at what I do. I think I know when to worry about having our cover blown. Trust me, this is a friendly joint. We are in absolutely no danger right now."

"That guy sitting behind you," 13 said, causing Max and 99 to glance behind them at the middle-aged, mustached man dressed in a business suit sitting alone with his back to their table. "What if he were to turn around in the middle of your meal and point a gun at your pretty little head?"

"We outnumber him," Max remarked. "Three of ours against one of his."

"Yeah, but are we faster than the bullets in his gun?"

"First let's establish that he _has_ a gun," 99 said.

"Feel free to turn around and ask him, Liz."

"Not _everyone_ is a potential enemy. I may be new to this game, but that doesn't mean I'm bad at it or that I don't know how to play it."

"Hypothetically, if I was a double agent, would you be able to figure it out before I turned on you?"

"Well, now I know you aren't, because a _real_ double agent wouldn't even bring up the possibility. Too risky."

"No, that thinking is what's too risky," 13 replied. "Deception is an act that requires huge foresight, Liz, and the illusion of complete trust on the part of the victim. By simply accepting my trust the way you did just now, you didn't prove your worth; if anything, you just made yourself an easier target. Your naïveté is going to get you killed."

"I'll take my chances," 99 said with a sigh. Turning to Max, she said, "What's your experience with double agents? I mean, you know, besides everything we learned in training?"

"None as of yet," Max shrugged. "Unless Brianna is who she says she might be."

"See, he's got the right idea," 13 nodded, just before taking a sip of water.

"You're just saying that because you slept with him," 99 grumbled.

"And you're just saying _that_ because you _want_ to sleep with him."

"Can you blame me for that?" 99 said, startling Max by placing her hand on his thigh as she had done earlier.

"Luckily for you, I don't know you well enough yet. Give me a week, and then ask me that question again."

"What about you, 44?"

"Don't get me started," 44 said in a whispery voice. "All the training in the world doesn't prepare you for the real thing."

"So do you or don't you have any experience…"

"How do you think I got like this?"

"Good point."

"But really, I haven't ever encountered one," 44 said, a rare positive, assuring note from the man. "Take it from the eldest one here, double agents aren't as common as Brianna would make them seem."

"Just because you don't see them doesn't mean they're not there," 13 added.

"You both dwell too much on the negative," 99 said. She placed her hand in her fake husband's. "If you feel that badly about it, then you really should embrace every light you find in this tunnel of a job. I know I will." She turned to Max and smiled.

"Oh, get a room," 13 said, her turn to grumble.

"What light?" 44 asked. "That's a serious question, 99: _what _light?"

"Someday you'll find yours," 99 said. "If you've endured this long, you can make it to the end."

"Yeah, but in one piece, Liz?" 13 said. "Let's get one thing straight here: you, Liz, you're inexperienced and way too trusting; Max, you're oblivious and accident-prone; and 44—shit, why aren't we using a goddamn field name for you?—you're always getting your panties in a bunch. You _all_ slow the whole operation down in your own ways. I seem to be the only one here with a real sense of purpose and commitment. I know it may sound difficult, but all you have to do is make your other concerns _secondary_ to the task at hand, and then, _only_ then, can you truly accomplish everything the Chief and CONTROL have set us out to do."

"Okay," 99 said, leaning forward, "do you want to know all the things wrong with that statement? Because I'll gladly tell you."

"First," the black-haired girl in the red-and-black Rocky Cola outfit standing at the exterior side of their table interrupted, causing everyone to turn their heads toward her, "if you don't mind me asking, I'd like to know if you're ready to order, and if so, what it is that you want." After a short pause, she reiterated succinctly: "So are you?"

Joining Rusty at the kitchen, Terra handed the four orders she'd just taken to one of the cooks, and then she turned to her co-worker classmate. "Any idea who those people in the trench coats are over there?" she asked him.

"You just took their orders," Rusty replied. "I haven't even talked to them. Why are you asking _me_ that? …Holly mentioned that two of them are working as Mr. Katten's assistants this year."

"Actually, that brunette reminds me an awful lot of Holly, now that you mention it."

"Yeah. Same sweet, innocent look to her."

"Maybe not _that_ innocent. Maybe they're hiding something underneath those trench coats."

"Maybe they're nudists."

Terra laughed. "Really? That's what you think?"

"I didn't say that. I just said it was a possibility."

"_Maybe they're secret agents or something,_" she whispered.

"_Why are you whispering?_" he responded in kind.

"_I don't want to blow their cover_."

"_You're crazy_."

Terra sighed, and then, with a shrug, simply said, "Do you want to go out some time?"

Rusty's eyes popped open, and he quickly turned to look at Terra in shock. "_What?_"

"Look, I haven't had a date in months," she said. "You're a nice guy. You're funny. It doesn't have to mean anything. What have I got to lose?"

"Your virginity?" Rusty said, cautiously yet jokingly.

Momentarily, the uplifting spirit of the conversation was put to a grinding halt. Rusty and Terra stared at each other with a mixed bag of emotions hidden behind their youthful faces.

"_Yes_," Terra said. "I'll admit that's true, Rusty, but we both know that's not going to happen, right?"

"Come on, I was joking," he replied. "I may be lonely, and sex may be on my mind a whole lot because of that, but that doesn't mean I'm heartless. I _care_ about women, damn it."

"Rusty, I know. Everybody knows."

"And yet they're all with douchebags instead."

"Does Saturday night work for you?"

"Considering that this means I'm finally going out with someone," Rusty said, "nothing else is even _touching_ my Saturday night now. I don't care if NASA calls me out because they need oil drillers to drop a nuke into a goddamn asteroid the size of Texas to save the world that night; I'm spending my night and my money with _you_."

"Okay," Terra said. She opened her mouth, probably to make a comment about Rusty's _Armageddon_ statement, but then, rightly sensing the pointlessness of such an endeavor, she changed her mind and gave him just the facts. "Tomorrow's my last night at Rocky Cola." Rusty gasped even more at that than he had at her asking him out. "Sorry, I probably should have told you that. Before I came over here I applied for a job at the Fortune Cookie Club down the street—you seen it?"

Rusty shook his head.

"Well, this will be your chance. They hired me on the spot—they must have been _really_ desperate. Anyway, Friday's my first day, training day, and then Saturday you can meet me at work, and we can have a Chinese dinner. What do you think? Eight o'clock?"

"Sounds good," Rusty said. "Then again, a guy like me will take almost anything. So what drew you to the Fortune Cookie Club? Was it the fortune, the cookies, or the club?"

"The fortune," Terra answered. "Starting Friday, I'll be making twice as much money as I do here. And in this economy, what more could anyone ask for?"

"Hey," an almost stereotypically big, hairy cook said, tapping on Rusty's shoulder and ending the conversation between the students. "Table seven, ready to serve." He handed the boy a red tray with a salad—Holly's meal—and a cheeseburger—Mark's—sitting on their respective dishes.

"All right," Rusty said. Backing away from Terra and the cook with the forgotten name, he nodded and proceeded to earn those ten dollars an hour. "Holly, Mr. Snow, meet Tucker," he said in a laughably horrendous attempt at an Australian accent as he handed them their food.


	15. Toil And Trouble

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Max said six hours later, in the middle of the night, while he and his colleagues broke into the high school (aided by silly-looking night-vision goggles).

As 13 seamlessly removed the chain from the gate at the eastern edge of the campus, she turned around to look at her three fellow spies and said quietly, "Yes, I'm sure it's a good idea, 86." With that, she opened the gate and led the other agents inside the school, carrying two suitcases full of surveillance equipment. She handed one of the cases to 44, who nodded. "99, you go with 44. I'll go with Max."

"Why can't _I_ go with Max?" 99 asked.

"We're here to set up fifty-odd tiny-ass hidden cameras," 13 said, "not to make love under the stars on the roof of a high school building." She reached into her camouflaged blue-black trench coat (which they all had) and cocked her gun, no doubt a silencer. "Now let's get to work."

13 led Max towards the far end of the school, while 99 and 44 were ordered to stay near where they were. The plan, as it were, was to have a complex web of cameras, each only slightly smaller than a dime, interconnected through invisible electronic signals, all simultaneously transmitting images (and optional sound) back to the computer screens 44 had set up back in his and 13's hotel room. As always, getting it all _ready_ was the hard part.

Two minutes later, 13 and 44 reached the far western 2000 building, where Katten's room await, with three floors of hallways underneath and around it begging to be kept under constant watch by the cameras they'd brought with them.

"So how do you plan on getting up there?" Max asked.

13 again reached into her trench coat and pulled out a vaguely pistol-like device, which was soon revealed to be a the firing device of a grappling hook, to the surprise of no one familiar with spy movie conventions. She fired it up to the top of the 2000 building, and once it was secured in place, 13 turned to Max and said, "All right. Hop on."

"That's dirty."

"Max."

"Hopping on." Despite his being the male of the pair, and thus having a scientifically proven greater proportion of muscle in his body, Max nevertheless wrapped his arms around 13's seemingly delicate waist and hitched a ride as she climbed upward the side of the building. During the climb, he still had another issue to address: "Wouldn't this have been easier if I'd gotten my own grappling hook?"

"Money's running tight at CONTROL right now, Max," she explained. "You know that. We didn't have the funds to give you and 99 your own this time. And here we are." She wasn't simply referring to their present economic situation; she was also pointing out that they'd reached the third floor, and so she carefully walked sideways towards the nearest window. "Hold this," she said, handing him the gun thingy, "with one hand. Hold me with the other." Max gripped the gun thingy with his left hand and tightened his hold on 13's waist with the right, and watched from an awkward angle as she pulled another device out of her trench coat: a glass cutter. "Ready?"

"Ready."

Balancing on the windowsill, 13 silently cut as perfect and as large a circle as she could in the glass with the device, and due to their height above the ground, the extreme necessity of quiet, and a soon-to-be-realized third factor that would compromise the other two, the tension was high, and things felt longer and slower than they actually were.

After several seconds and the near-completion of 13's window cutting, Max suddenly felt the razor-sharp hooks at the top of the building loosening their hold. Clearly the agency's budget cuts were affecting not only the distribution of useful gadgets, but also the effectiveness of said gadgets. "Uh, 13…" Max said, and a second later the hooks came loose from the roof's edge.

"_Shit!_" 13 yelped, grabbing the rope as Max fell towards the ground thirty feet below. She caught it, only to have the hooks at the end fall into the side of her left hand, and she cried (quietly) in agony. Red blood oozed onto the shiny metal, but the pain had only just begun. Unable to maintain grip on the windowsill, 13 slipped off the side of the building as Max fell onto the grass. The sudden jerk of the fall caused 13 to inadvertently flip backwards, and three seconds later, silver hooks still tearing into her hand, she, too, fell, landing in one of the small, eight-foot-tall gingko trees on the side of the 2000 building. But alas, it _still_ wasn't over, and 13 rolled in what was, on the bright side, endurable pain, out of the tree and onto the grass several feet away from Max.

Sighing and wiping plant material off her face, 13 mumbled, "At least the worst is over." She tore her aching hand away from the hooks and used the first wiping material she could—her own mouth—to get some of the blood off her fingers.

"_Look out!_" Max shouted, and when 13 turned onto her back, she suddenly saw the large circular pane of glass she'd just cut from the window falling right towards her face at high speed. Luckily, the observant Max jumped in the way and caught it in his hands before it could crush her. Instead, he ended doing the crushing himself, as he lay sideways across her in the immediate aftermath of the catch.

With another sigh, 13 remarked, "I wonder how 44 and 99 are doing."

* * *

In the middle of drilling a miniscule hole into the side of the cafeteria's outside wall, 99 turned to look to the west where she'd heard someone fall and land in a tree. 44 must have heard it, too, because he left the interior of the cafeteria, where he'd been installing one or two more cameras. At this distance and in this light (not even silly-looking night-vision goggles were good beyond a short distance), it was hard to tell who'd just been downed, but 99 at least had individual thoughts on the circumstances.

"I hope that was 13 instead of 86," she said, not so much wishing ill on her fake husband's ex-lover as just wishing better for her fake husband.

"More likely 86 than 13," 44 added.

99 glanced back at 44 and said, "Well, you're probably right."

"I've got two cameras ready to go in there," 44 said, pointing behind him at the doors he'd just exited through. "How's that one coming along?"

"Fine, I guess," 99 said, inserting the tiny-ass camera inside the hole she'd just drilled. "Do you seriously think we can install fifty of these things all over the campus in one night without being caught?" She pressed her hands around the sides of the camera to make sure it was tightly in place; and it was.

"Probably not. But if it makes you feel any better, they probably won't do any good in the long run anyway, and this effort is probably all for naught."

"That's supposed to make me feel _better_?"

"Look on the bright side. At least we're not the ones paying for all this stuff."

"I know. The taxpayers are. Again, 44: _better_?"

"…You're asking the wrong guy."

"As helpful as monitoring Katten's movements will be," 99 said, walking away from 44 and towards the small bridge of a pathway that led to the second floor of the 7000 (math and foreign language) building, where she and him would be installing the next superfluous set of cameras, "if he's _really_ in cohorts with KAOS, wouldn't we make a lot more progress in bringing them down if we just tapped his phone lines?"

Unlocking the door through the magic of spy gadgetry, 44 replied, "You're really starting to make us look bad. Do you know that?" He stepped aside politely so 99 could enter the hallway.

"I'm just saying," 99 shrugged as 44 followed. "You're right, 44, all these cameras probably _won't_ do us a whole lot of good. How likely is it Katten will walk down _this_ hallway, when his classroom is at the complete opposite end of campus and the plants he's growing are at the front of the school? A tapped phone would cut our work in half. Quarters, even." She startled 44 when she turned around suddenly, causing him to almost bump into her and nearly lose his balance afterward. "I mean, _seriously_, how much money did we spend on all these cameras and the software to use them? Compare that to one, maybe at most two or three phone taps, depending on how many he uses to keep in touch. If I was in control, I'd definitely run things a little differently."

"But you _are_ in CONTROL," 44 said.

99 was about to explain what she meant by that statement, but 44 had dropped the camera bag and pulled his gun on her before she could even reach for her own in self-defense.

"I knew something was up when you started talking about all our faults," 44 said, the pistol shaking in his nervous hand, but not enough for the threat to be diminished. "Of course the new girl's a double agent! What was I thinking? If it was a veteran, someone would've already _known_! _Don't move!_"

"44, put the gun down," 99 said, moving her hand in an up-and-down motion to illustrate the thought. "Listen to me, 44: _I'm not a double agent_. I _am_ in CONTROL."

"Last I checked," 44 remarked, "the one in control has the gun pointed at the other. That's me, 99. Liz. What's your real name?"

99 raised her hands in surrender. "Look, I mean you no harm. _I'm on your side here! I want to help you, damn it!_"

"You can't bribe me. I may be a bit of a wimp, but I'm not _that_ easy!" Still maintaining steady aim at 44, he lifted his left leg and removed the shoe with his free right hand. After pressing the button to open it, he dialed a number and then spoke into it. "13? It's 44. I've got 99 at gunpoint here. She's a double agent!"

"Be right there!" 99 heard 13 reply before she hung up.

"_You've got it all wrong!_" 99 begged. "I told you, _I'm not a double agent!_ …And for goodness' sake, you didn't even tell 13 where we _were_!"

"I…" 44 said, just before he was interrupted by a ringing shoe phone. "Hello?"

"_Where are you?_" 13 asked.

"Second floor, 7000 building," 44 sighed, looking at 99 with contempt. "Hurry here!"

"_ETA sixty seconds,_" 13 shouted back.

"There you go," 44 grumbled, pressing the gun closer to 99's face, "making us look bad again."

"I was _helping_ you, damn it!" 99 said. "_Put the gun down!_"

"If you're _really_ an agent of CONTROL," 44 said, "prove it."

"_How?_"

"Say something only a CONTROL agent would know."

"There's a flaw in that proof," 99 said, sadly with full realization that she was only annoying 44 even more with that statement. "If a KAOS agent is infiltrating CONTROL, they'd be learning everything from the ground up. They'd be indistinguishable from any other agent, save a possible false background. The sad thing is, 44, if there _is_ a double agent among us, we won't know it until it's too late. They won't reveal themselves unless they slip, which is unlikely, or unless they have no choice, which—"

At that moment, 13 and 86 ran through the door, flipped on the lights and threw off their silly-looking night-vision goggles with the hands that weren't holding their respective pistols. The burst of light almost blinded 44 and 99, the latter of whom recovered quickly from the shock and pulled the gun out of the former's hand along with her own from inside her trench coat, then aiming both guns at a terrified 44 and backing off a bit, only now with two guns instead of one pointed at her, those belonging to 13 and 86. Instead of one on none, now it was two on two, and 99 couldn't have been more afraid for her life.

"You _bitch_!" 13 snarled.

"I _liked_ you!" Max whined. "I can't believe I _kissed_ you!"

While 44 crawled behind Max for safety, 13 told 86, "Quit thinking with your penis, Max, and _help me take this bitch down!_"

"For the last time, _I'm on your side!_" 99 pleaded.

"Oh, it _will_ be your last time," 13 said. "Now listen: you have two choices here. You can put the guns down and walk out of here in cuffs, _or_, and this is a big goddamn _or_ belonging to an even bigger goddamn boat, _or_, you can try and shoot us and be carried out of here in a body bag. And if you _are_ dumb enough to do the latter, keep in mind that doing so will result in the exposure of both of our organizations—you _do_ work for KAOS, right?—and that _both_ of our operations here will be shut down when that happens. I'll give you thirty seconds to choose, and then I'm going to make the decision for you." To emphasize her point, she cocked her gun and steadied her aim at 99, and then used hand motions in a futile attempt to get Max to do the same. Luckily, 99's legitimate, non-double agent charms seemed to work on him, and he didn't do as he was told, much to 13's annoyance. "Twenty-five seconds," she warned 99.

"You're making a big mistake…" 99 said.

"If you're on our side, then why aren't you putting the guns down? Twenty seconds."

"Remember basic training? There's no way to win in a situation like this!"

"Fifteen seconds."

"I can't put the guns down, because if I do, you'll arrest me and lose an important agent, but if I don't, _you'll shoot me_!"

"Ten seconds."

"Maybe she's telling the truth, Brianna," Max suggested, but still keeping aim at 99.

"Maybe she is, maybe she isn't," 13 said. "Five seconds. We'll let management be the judge of that."

"_Brianna…!_" 99 said.

"Three…two…_one_!"

99 flinched as 13 pulled the trigger, but ended up letting out a sigh of relief rather than any amount of blood resulting from a wound.

Confused, 13 looked at her gun, only to have the normally more embarrassing Max remind her, "Safety's on."

"Right," 13 nodded. In the brief second where she flipped the safety switch, 99 took advantage of the distraction to fire one of her weapons. "_Traitor!_" she shouted, a call that echoed down the hallway while 99 dropped the pistols in her hands—the _silencers_ they'd all been issued, a fact also forgotten by 13. Not one organization, good or evil, was going to be exposed tonight.

Walking towards Max, the only other agent still standing, 99 confirmed that her shot had been as minor an injury as she could have hoped for, and indeed it was: 13 probably had a few broken bones in her bleeding ankle, at worst. "Tie her up," 99 ordered Max and 44, who complied, pulling some thin but powerful rope out from inside their trench coats and bound an increasingly woozy 13 inside them.

"You're _insane_!" 13 growled.

"And you're not very trusting," 99 said. "I guess we both have issues we need to work on."

"If you are who you say you are, you better watch your ass for the rest of this mission, because I swear to god, you make _one more _mistake, I'll have you kicked out of the agency so fast, you won't even…_what the f—_" but before 13 could finish her curse, her mouth had been covered up by 44.

"44, I really don't think the duct tape was necessary," 99 remarked.

"Oh," 44 said, reaching to remove it, until 99 corrected him again.

"No, no, it's okay," she continued. "It's better this way. It shuts her up."

"So," Max said, wiping his hands, "are we _sure_ none of us is a double agent?"

He and 44 and 99 exchanged glances with one another and with a bound, pissed-off 13, and the consensus seemed to be: trust everyone, and trust no one. Boy, if there _were_ any KAOS agents among their number, then they were doing a hell of a good job destroying the team from the inside out.

"Anyway," Max said, shaking hands again with the untied agents, "I'm just glad something finally _happened_. I feel like I've been reliving _Death Proof_ ever since I got here."

"What's _Death Proof_?" 44 asked.

"Remember _Grindhouse_ last spring? That was two movies rolled into one, and _Death Proof_ was Quentin Tarantino's movie."

"Was that the one with the chick with the gun for a leg?"

"No, that was _Planet Terror_."

"How has this been like _Death Proof_?" 99 said. Upon closer inspection of a glaring agent 13, she added to that query, "And why is Brianna's hand bleeding?"

"Well," Max said, "I've had to sit through a whole lot of nothing, and only just now has my patience been rewarded with something finally _happening_. Sitting around watching people just randomly talk about shit is only interesting for a little while, and after that, if I don't start seeing tits or explosions, I start going crazy. For a few minutes back there, my heart was finally pounding, and I _actually_ felt like I was in danger!" he said with a big smile spreading across his face.

"…And loving it," 44 said.

"_Exactly!_ …Oh, and 13 cut herself on the grappling hook, 99."

"Good for her," 99 said. Scratching her head, she asked them, "So…should we set up the rest of the cameras, or what?"

"Yes," 44 said, taking back his gun as 99 handed it to them, "let's do that."


	16. The New Guy

_Thursday, September 4, 2008_

At snack the next morning, Holly, Rusty, John, and Claire met at their lockers in the hallway near the drama room as they always did during school breaks, all of them unprepared for the forthcoming day's non-educational events.

Dressed in a robin's egg blue T-shirt and darker blue jeans, Holly turned to Claire, who was wearing a black Metallica T-shirt (_Master of Puppets_), and said, "Claire, will you do me a favor later today?"

Closing her locker door after taking out her math book, Claire answered with a sigh, "It involves Kent, doesn't it?" She turned to John, who was nigh impossible to miss in his inexplicably bright yellow shirt, and asked him, "You're okay with her doing this?"

"I don't know what it is yet," John shrugged. "But I don't think I should be worried, Claire." He put his hand on Holly's shoulder. "We trust each other, right?" he asked Holly, who nodded confidently at him and then at Claire.

"You're an _idiot_," Claire said, laughing uncomfortably. "She's trying to get back together with her ex, and you're just standing there and _taking_ it! She's practically cheating on you, man!"

"Funny how you didn't trust me or believe me when I said Jimmy was cheating on _you_," Holly said, "but now you're trying to pull the same trick on us, except this time, it's _bullshit_. I'm not my mother, damn it! _I'm not a whore!_"

"Calm down, Holly," Claire said. "I _know_ you're not. You're the sweetest girl on the planet; we _all_ know that. It's just, I wish you'd make up your damn mind about Kent."

"I'm trying to do that, which is exactly why I need you. Do you want to hear the favor, or not?"

"Shoot."

"Okay, then. After fourth period, when lunch starts, I want you to pull Kent away for a second. Don't let him go meet Tom and his other friends just yet. Tell him…tell him that I want to talk to him. And I'll meet him in the hallway," Holly said, pointing to the second stretch of hallway between this one and the drama room. "And…we'll just talk."

"You'll _just_ talk?" Claire said. "Nothing more? Nothing less? Just talking?"

"I'm not dating him anymore, Claire."

"Great. So what are you going to talk about?"

"We'll see. I was thinking we could try starting anew, as just friends."

Claire burst out in laughter. "Are you _crazy_, Holly? That's _not_ going to work!"

"Well, we can _try_, and that's all I care about."

"_Ozzie!_" Samara appeared without warning (as she so often did), startling the others. Today she was wearing a salmon pink blouse and blue-black jeans, and she grinned as she walked down the steps into the hallway to greet some of her most consistent victims. "_Cheech! Beetlejuice!_" After calling out her enthusiastic nicknames for Holly, Rusty, and John, respectively, she then acknowledged Claire's presence with an incoherent, bitter mumble. "How's the hell of adolescence treating you all during this our penultimate year of high school?"

"…You already know," Rusty said. "You _always_ already know. That's your _thing_."

"Right you are, Cheech," Samara nodded. "And while I'm well aware of your problem, if your masculinity is daring enough to consider it as such, I think we all know I'd rather talk about the adventures of Batman and Ozzie."

"What problem?!" Claire said, giving Rusty a demanding look. "What happened?!"

"Yes, Samara," Holly said, "I'm going to talk to Kent. Do you have a problem with that, too?" She sighed and looked for support from John, who responded by wrapping a comforting arm around her shoulders and patting her on the back.

"_What happened?_" Claire growled, now turning to Samara for an answer.

"Ozzie, I have no problem with you and Batman getting back together…"

"_That's not happening!_" Holly nearly screamed.

"So naïve. Anyway, _I_ have no problem with that, largely because I don't give a rat's ass who's dating whom and all this soap opera nonsense belongs on daytime television entertaining menopausal old ladies like my grandma rather than impressionable youths like ourselves. However, what does concern me is the self-destructive and indecisive hypocrisy of a certain someone you hold very dear to your heart."

"You can say my name, you know," Claire said. "It wouldn't kill you to say my name just _once_."

"I'd say your name," Rusty added.

"As you can see," Samara continued, "this person clearly has trouble accepting things the way they are. Were she not such a bitch, I might feel sorry for her, suffering as she does from uncontrollable lust not only for your own ex-boyfriend, Ozzie, but also for her own future ex-boyfriend, Cheech, and outright denying both in the name of upholding a reputation she seems to think she has."

"I'm not the bitch, Samara, _you_ are."

"Hey! You just earned yourself a nickname!" Samara said, sarcastically clapping her hands together in rapid but subdued motion. She extended her hand out to Claire and said, "Hi, Pot. I'm Kettle. I'm glad someone called me black, I guess all these years of wearing baggy clothes and rapping about hoes and chronic has finally paid off!" She let out a fake, but true to Samara's nature, very believable relieved sigh. "At last! I'm no longer a wigger!"

Claire scoffed and looked the other way.

"_Oh no!_" Samara gasped. Frantically looking back and forth between Holly, Rusty, and John, she falsely mourned, "I just offended Pot, my new best friend! Whatever shall I do?"

"_Go away_."

"Claire doesn't like Kent, and she doesn't like Rusty, either," Holly said to Samara. "If she did, she would have _shown_ it, Samara."

"Why do you think her first time with what's-his-name was so angry?" Samara said. "That was her sexual frustration not being satisfied by his oh-so-generic penis."

"You lost _your_ virginity just to put yourself on the same level as _me_!" Claire snapped back at her. "And you're calling _me_ bad?! You're a selfish whore!"

"…Who, like you, has only had sex with one guy. Oh, Pot, we _do_ have a lot in common!"

Claire buried her face in her hand and grumbled.

The conservation was about to resume, but when the sound of footsteps was heard entering the hallway from the quad as Samara had a few minutes earlier, the five of them all turned to see who the stepping belonged to. As it turned out, it was not someone any of them knew: a fairly tall, handsome young man, dressed in a cold gray, long-sleeved shirt, blue jeans, and for some reason, hiking boots. He hadn't shaved for some time, leaving him with a reasonably thick head of black hair that extended onto the sides of his face and neck, the little beard that could. Regardless of their opinions on facial hair, all three girls were immediately awestruck by the sight of him.

Naturally, the most strong-willed of the trio made the first move. Samara leaned to the side and her arm caught onto the wall nearby, thereby creating a blockage in this particular artery of the school. But it was the best kind of heart attack if you were a woman. "Hi there," she grinned, while Holly, Claire, and the two comparatively emasculated boys they usually hung out with watched.

"Hi there," the new guy replied. He held up the sheet of paper he was holding in his hand—a white, index card-sized paper they all recognized as an official schedule issued by the school authorities to students every semester. The girls noticed that he noticed Samara in all her Samara, but they also noticed that he was a man of action who made sure he got things done. "Would you mind moving, please? I'm trying to get to that classroom."

"Oh, you're in drama?" Samara said. "Well done. What level?"

"Five-six," he said. "The advanced class."

"You hear that, Ozzie?" Samara said, turning around to smile at Holly and a less-than-excited John. "He's with _us_." When she returned to face the new guy, she finally asked him, "What's your name?"

"Her name is Ozzie?"

"It's Holly," Holly said.

"But what's _your_ name?" Samara repeated.

"Milo Barnes," the newcomer replied, crossing his arms and sighing. "We can talk more during fifth period, okay?"

"Whatever you say, Otis," Samara said with a nod.

"_Move your arm!_" Milo growled. "I'm not going to do the _limbo_ just so I can check out a classroom! And what the hell do you mean, '_Otis_'?"

"Are you doing anything this weekend, Otis?"

"No," Milo said, shaking his head. "Why? What did you have in mind?"

"Oh, I think you know _exactly_ what I have in mind. But if you were looking for some specifics, and I know you were, the night would begin with a dinner somewhere. I, of course, would not be the one paying for it. After that, we'd go back to either my place or yours, whichever you prefer, and watch the namesake movie from whence your pet name comes, and then, as I'm sure you've already thought about upon seeing me for the first time, we'd take our clothes off and do a little shadow dancing to conclude the night. I'd go into more detail about that last part, but there are kids here," she motioned her head back towards the others, "whose young minds I don't want to see corrupted by this talk of a perfectly natural human process."

"How's Saturday night work for you?" Milo smiled.

"I'll give you my number during fifth," Samara nodded. She moved her arm and made way for Milo to walk, but then the bell rang and they knew they all had to go to third period. Everyone groaned for various individual reasons, said their temporary goodbyes, and headed off to class.


	17. The New Girl And Rusty's Joy

"All right, Holly," Claire said two hours later, meeting her friend just outside the hallway on the steps of the administration building leading out into the quad. "Kent is in there waiting for you right now. As per your request." She nodded and waited a few seconds for Holly to reply, but that didn't happen, at least not in the way she or anybody else expected.

"I've changed my mind," Holly said with a disappointed sigh. "I—I can't bring myself to do it, Claire." She sat down at the top of the stairway, and seconds later Rusty, Claire, and John surrounded her and prepared to shower her with their sympathy. "I can't," she repeated.

"Why not?" John asked. He looked at Claire, as if to warn her that she'd pay for this.

"It's not that I don't _want_ to talk to him," Holly explained. "I do. I _really_ do. But it feels like there's an enormous pressure on me. What if he isn't happy to talk to me? What if it turns out he's actually _mad_ at me? I've got the best intentions for our future, but he might still be angry about the worst parts of our past." She pulled her sandwich out of a brown paper bag, lifted it up to her mouth, but couldn't develop the energy or the willpower to take a bite out of it.

"_I can't believe I'm actually saying this…_" Claire muttered to herself before putting her hands on Holly's shoulders and telling her, "It'll be all right, Holly. He's not going to get mad at you. He wouldn't do that. I know him too well. Ever since you broke up with him, he's been too incredibly _sad_, not mad, about the whole thing. There won't be any yelling or screaming to worry about anything. If anything, you should probably expect lots of hugging and crying and…" She meant to end that ambiguously, but John decided not to have it that way.

"…And kissing?" he said. Holly, Rusty, and Claire all turned to him, to which he replied directly to Claire, "Is that 'being a better boyfriend' enough for you?"

"If there's any kissing at all," Claire answered, pulling Holly closer to her, "it'll probably be on the cheek, John. That's it."

"_Probably?_" John said. He crossed his arms and sighed. "First of all, I want you all to understand that I'm being mostly rhetorical when I'm asking these questions. The only problem is, don't you think it says a lot when you have to have your questions be rhetorical at all?"

"Yeah, it says a lot about _you_," Rusty said. "Don't you _trust_ her, man?"

"I do," John said. "Except Kent and I don't really know each other—"

"You will," Holly replied quickly.

"And on top of that, her relationship with _him_ seems like it was a hell of lot more intense than the one she has with me. I know intense isn't always better, but I think it's still something I have the right to be worried about."

"He was her very first boyfriend," Claire said. "What did you expect?"

"Jimmy was your first boyfriend, Claire. Where was the intensity in _your_ relationship?"

"You expect intensity in a relationship he detached himself from with the company of other girls?"

"I think you're starting to see my point now."

"Dude, she's _not_ going to cheat on you!" Rusty exclaimed. He patted Holly gently on the head. "You're the one who _wasn't_ worried about that! And now you _are_? What gives?"

"Rusty?" Everybody turned to see who'd called his name, and they saw Terra standing there, looking reasonably uncomfortable due to her timing but otherwise as attractive as ever, in a bright green blouse and blue jeans. "Sorry, guys. Um, did I come at a bad time?"

"Maybe," John said.

"No," Holly said. "The more friends, the merrier, right?"

"If she says so…" Claire nodded and shrugged, welcoming Terra to join them. She took a seat beside John on the steps, then smiled past Holly and Claire at Rusty, which caused those two girls plus John to join her in looking, with understandable disbelief. "Okay, seriously, is this what I think is?" Claire asked. "_Seriously?_"

"I asked Rusty out last night," Terra said. "He didn't tell you?"

"You didn't tell _me_?" Holly asked Terra.

"_Rusty?_" Holly, Claire, John and Terra all said to him at once.

"Is this the _problem_ Samara was referring to at snack?" Claire said, laughing. "How the _hell_ is this a problem? You could get _laid_!"

"You don't know the half of it," Rusty said, shaking and then bowing his head, as though he were ashamed of this for some reason.

"What's the matter?" Holly said. She raised a semi-proud (given her current situation) fist and said, "Hooray for Rusty!"

"What's going on?" The five of them turned again to see Lex standing where Terra had been a minute earlier. She was dressed equally well as her dance classmate, and when the two of them made eye contact with each other, two and two were instantly put together. "Rusty, are you going out with _her_, too?" She pointed an accusing (and correct) finger at Terra.

"And _there's_ the other half of it," Rusty remarked to his friends.

Terra rose to her feet and stormed towards Lex. They locked gaze with each other, and the people all around them (and there were plenty) waited, with varied degrees of anticipation, for the forthcoming battle.

"How the _hell_ did this happen?" Claire said. "First you have _no_ women, now you have _two_?"

"More like one and a half," Rusty said. "Terra asked me out on a whim last night while we were at work, just 'cause she was bored and all, and then I found Lex waiting for me when I got off, and she asked me out, too. I said yes to Terra, obviously, but when Lex asked me, I just told her I'd think about it. I didn't say why."

"Did you _seriously_ think you could juggle two girls at once, Rusty?" Claire asked. "Because it didn't even last a _day_, man."

"I _wasn't_ juggling them! If I was, I would've said _yes_ to Lex last night! No, Claire, I'm not like Jimmy, damn it!"

"Then why didn't you say '_no_'?" Lex demanded of him.

"Well, I _am_ a drug dealer," Rusty joked. It wasn't as good a comeback as he'd hoped, though.

"Then you're just going to have to choose between us, Rusty," Terra said. "So come on up here," she said as she waved her hand towards herself and Lex, "and _choose_."

* * *

Meanwhile, in the cafeteria at the other end of campus, Rick, Tom, and Mike were all sitting together at a circular table as they had been for the past several days. Iris and Mila were both eating with each other outside rather than giving Rick the company of either of them, but before too long, another girl would fill the void they'd left behind at this particular table.

Swallowing the cafeteria food with regret (but not for any other decision than the purchasing of said food), Rick, wearing an insultingly funny T-shirt, remarked to his friends, "So, guys, the theme of the birthday party is going to be your favorite sports teams. Wear a jersey, a cap, hell, maybe even bring your balls." At those last words, Mike almost spat out his juice. "Your…your _sports_ balls. You know what I mean!"

"Crimson Tide," Mike said with a nod while wiping his wet mouth with a napkin. "Yeah, baby."

"I assume you and Oriel will be in Ducks attire?" Rick asked Tom, who refused to confirm that assumption with any sort of head movement. "Angels? Packers? What's it going to be, dude?"

"I don't know yet," Tom replied. "You'll find out on Saturday when we get there."

"Well, _I'm_ going to be wearing my Dodgers stuff, as always. Iris probably will be, too."

"Have you talked to her since yesterday?" Mike asked.

"I tried. MySpace, Facebook, AIM. _Nothing_. She's ignoring me. But that's okay, I guess. That just means she likes me, after all."

"Really?" Tom said. "If you _weren't_ dating her, that might be true, but since you _are_, Rick, that's probably a bad sign."

"Well, unlike you, Tom, I prefer to look on the brighter side of things."

"Enjoy your delusions while you can," Tom said with a shrug, taking a sip of water from a bottle. "Because you're in high school now, which means before too long, you're going to realize how much life _sucks_."

"I'm much closer to getting laid than you are, man."

"Good for you," Tom said nonchalantly. "I don't care how close you or anyone else is to having sex. It's not my problem."

"But Oriel not putting out _is_ your problem, is it not?"

"Do I sound worried?"

"No, but you should be."

"Are you sure you're not reflecting your own frustrations back on me, Rick?" Tom said. "Because if anyone here should be worried, it's _you_. Do you know why that is, or does Samara need to come back here and—"

"She does." The three boys turned to see Samara walking towards them. She stood behind Rick's chair and rested her arms on the back of it. Looking down on him with her usual sadistic grin, she said, "We meet again."

"You _like_ me, don't you?" Rick smiled back at her. In response, Samara slapped him. "_Ow!_"

"I like Disneyland as much as the next person," she said, "In fact, it's actually quite surprising that I should be so open-minded about The Happiest Place on Earth in the first place, especially considering my Jewish upbringing and the alleged anti-Semitic views of Walt Disney himself. That being said, I really think Fantasyland should stay where the Imagineers intended, Aaliyah."

"_Aaliyah?_" Rick laughed. "Did you just call me '_Aaliyah_'?"

"Like the singer?" Mike asked, raising an eyebrow at Samara.

"Indeed. You see, Abigail," she told Rick, without moving from where she was standing, "in trying to think of a nickname with which to refer to you every time the universe conspires against the both of us and forces us to cross paths, I realized that I couldn't think of just _one_ name to be used consistently. Instead, I decided that there would be no more effective way to call out a potential womanizer than by referring to such a man with an ever-shuffling array of _woman's_ names. It makes perfect sense if you think about it. What better way to belittle one's masculinity than by referring to him with accusations of full-fledged femininity? This being the first day of a month-long trial run, you'll notice I'm using all 'A' names today, Agatha."

"You think that's going to scare me?" Rick laughed. "You think that's going to make me feel bad? I'm untouchable, Samara, you can't faze me!"

"Give it time, Allison. It will."

"You remind me Dr. Cox from _Scrubs_," Mike said. "The cynicism, the sarcasm, the nicknaming. You're entertaining."

"Just don't get on my bad side," she replied. "Not that my body _has_ a bad side, but we're referring to my personality here."

"Excuse me?" The four of them turned to see a pretty, if rather short, young woman dressed in a bright pink blouse and cream-colored pants standing there, looking at them. She had long, raven black hair and turquoise eyes, and was holding a familiar white paper flier in one hand. Rick's eyes popped open wide with excitement as they always did upon seeing a beautiful girl (and since this was a high school, there were a lot of those around, especially when you're not getting any), but he would receive comeuppance from Samara in due time. "Sorry to interrupt, but, uh, are you Thomas Fraser?" she asked, pointing to Tom.

"Yes, I am," Tom nodded. Rick groaned with noticeable jealousy. "You've got one of the fliers I put up at snack?"

"Yeah," the girl nodded. "You and your band are looking for a drummer? Well, here I am."

"Wow, that was fast," Tom remarked to his friends. "Come here. Let's talk music." He invited her to take a seat beside him, except there was no other chair in lieu of Iris's (and Mila's) absence from the table.

"Here you go," Samara grinned, abruptly pulling Rick's chair out from under him and causing to land hard on his ass on the floor below ("_Ow!_"). "Go on," she said, offering the new girl Rick's now-empty seat. "Take it."

Looking at Rick, who had gotten up and was wiping dust off his body, she replied, "I don't know if I should. I mean, he was sitting there…"

"Key word: _was_," Samara said. "Come on, now, time's a-wastin'. Take a seat next to Lucky."

The new girl sighed and took Rick's seat. "Sorry," she told the boy now being forced to stand. She turned to Tom and began: "So I noticed that for your influences, you put '_Everything_.' I'm sure that's probably accurate in its own way, but I was wondering if maybe you could be a little more specific now that I'm here. Oh, and, why did she call you 'Lucky'?"

"Because I have a girlfriend who's way out of my league," Tom replied. He pulled his brown leather wallet out of his pocket, flipped to a picture of Oriel inside, and showed it to the new girl. "That's Oriel. She's our lead singer, guitarist, keyboardist…she and our bassist Kristen go to school in Long Beach. Of course, the concept of any kind of romantic or sexual _league_ between two people is ridiculous, despite what Hollywood would like to have us think. Love knows no boundaries."

"She looks like that girl from _Speed Racer_," the new girl said, taking another look at the picture in Tom's wallet.

"Christina Ricci?" Tom said. "Yeah, we hear that one a lot. What's your name?"

"I didn't say it? Sorry." She and Tom then shook hands. "I'm Jessica Kellehan. You can just call me Jessie."

"Will do."

"Are you a sports fan?" Rick asked her with an odd coolness.

"You can answer that if you want," Samara told Jessie, "but it's just a trap to entice you to go to her birthday party this Saturday that Amelia here foolishly thinks might actually work."

"_Samara!_" Rick whined.

"The Detroit Red Wings," Jessie answered regardless. "That's where I'm from."

"So you're a hockey fan?" Tom said. "All right, we've already got stuff in common. Actually, Oriel's going to be at Rick's birthday party, you can come to it if you want. Maybe while we're all there you can set up an audition date with us."

"What about Kristen?"

"You don't need to worry about her. She'll be doing other things that night."

"What other things?"

"Guys, probably," Mike explained. For a second, Jessie was confused, until he explained, "Kristen's a slut."

"And you still hang around with her?"

"Well, she and Oriel have known each other since they were little," Tom added, "and just as Oriel's a great multi-instrumentalist, Kristen plays a mean bass, and she's got a talented musician father and an in-home studio and practice-ready soundproofed garage. Last year she lost her virginity, and it's all gone downhill since then, but we cope with her anyway, admittedly mostly because of her talent and her dad."

"Isn't that kind of using her?"

"Kristen's not the kind of person who cares about being exploited, Jessie."

"Boy," Jessie said, "if we ever get famous, someone better keep an eye on her."

"So who are your biggest influences as a musician?"

Pointing out the vagueness of the '_everything_' listed on the notice Tom had copied and plastered all over the campus, Jessie responded to that query in kind with, "Who are yours?"

"Well, this is all very enthralling," Samara said, watching as Rick borrowed a blue chair from a neighboring table and placed it next to Mike's seat at this table, "and really, I'm on the edge of my seat, fascinated by the miniscule foibles and the remotest issues of your everyday lives, but alas, my children, I must be going, for there are others on these grounds whose bullshit I must call them out on. Andy," she said to Rick specifically, "if you must know, I am a Yankees fan myself, but me hailing from New York, with the attitude and the top-caliber looks to prove it, that shouldn't surprise you or anyone else. The rest of you and your respective teams are infinitely inferior to mine, and that kind of inferiority, sadly, can have detrimental effects on the elite such as myself, and prolonged exposure such as this isn't healthy, and that is why I must be going."

"You know," Rick said, pointing a finger at Samara, "Andy isn't necessarily a girl's name."

"It's short for Andrea," Samara said. Turning towards the door, she exited by saying, "I leave you in peace."

* * *

"How can you like her, Rusty?" Lex asked him, pointing a finger at Terra while he stood between them. "She watches _Gossip Girl_! That show _sucks_!"

"She's right," Rusty nodded awkwardly as she looked towards Terra. "That show does kind of suck…"

"And I suppose watching The History Channel makes _you_ any better?" Terra argued.

Lex scoffed. "It's _educational_! It's definitely something _you_ could use, Terra!"

Terra gasped at the insult, and Rusty rushed to her defense. "Come on, Lex," he said. "They're dead people. Who cares?"

"It's _boring_," Terra said. "You might as well be watching The Weather Channel, you whore!"

"_Whoa_," Rusty said, jumping back to Lex's side. "Hold on there! Just because she's had sex and you haven't doesn't make her a _whore_!"

"She had sex with Shane," Terra replied. "Who in their right mind would do that to themselves?"

Rusty backed up to join Terra. "Yeah, Lex, what the hell?"

"Bulls suck, Bears suck, Cubs sub, White Sox suck," Lex said.

"_Bitch!_"

Rusty hurried back to Lex's side. "She has a point, Terra. I mean, where have the Bulls been since Michael Jordan left?"

"Blackhawks suck," Lex added.

"I don't give a shit about hockey, you idiot," Terra laughed, thereby causing Rusty to run back to her.

"That's something The History Channel _won't_ teach you," Rusty nodded at Lex.

"You know what?" Terra said, putting one hand on Rusty's shoulder and pushing him back towards the stairway. "Why don't you spend some time over there and let us handle this?"

"That seems awfully counterproductive, but sure, why not?" A minute later, while the girls continued to spat and an otherwise bored audience of students continued to watch them do so, Samara appeared beside Rusty to add her colorful commentary. "Hey," Rusty said to her. "How's it going?"

"You tell me," she replied, glancing at the feud.

"I think it speaks for itself."

"Are you enjoying this?"

"Samara, you know me. I didn't ask for this. One girl would've been fine, it's just, I'm so used to the concept of not being with anyone at _all_ that I got caught up in this admittedly _very_ fine mess. But I'm not a pervert or a cheater!"

"I know, I know, you don't have to defend yourself around me, Cheech."

"You wouldn't happen to have some mud I can throw on them, would you?" Rusty then asked her.

"Oh, I'm sure your own semen will do just fine," she replied. "Having said that, you _do_ realize you're eventually going to have to choose one, right?"

"Yeah, that's how this whole thing got started. They called me up, forced me to try and choose, they started debating each other's merits, and then _boom_." In an attempt to change the subject to something less heavy, he said: "Hey, did you ever notice The History Channel's initials are THC?"

Samara let out a small laugh. "That's funny."

"A whole demographic of viewers is waiting, all they gotta do is use those initials and—"

"_Oh, yeah?_" Terra yelled, startling everyone. As she stomped over towards Rusty and Samara, she continued, "_Let's see how you handle this, then!_" She grabbed Rusty by the shoulders, pulled him towards her, and kissed him on the lips. After doing that, she turned around to face an incredibly pissed-off Lex and uttered a triumphant "_Ha!_"

"_Holy shit_," Rusty said quietly, taking a few steps to sit down with his friends on the stairway.

"_This isn't over_," Lex said, seconds before turning around and leaving, ending the fight and causing things to return to normal among all the students and staff that got caught up watching it.

Claire turned to look at Terra and said, "You just kissed Rusty."

"I just kissed Rusty," Terra replied in shock.

"I choose you," Rusty said.


	18. Made

While "Violet Hill" by Coldplay echoed through the motel room on high-quality speakers, 13 and 44 carefully looked back and forth at the various video feeds coming in from the high school onto their computer screens, painstakingly set up on the motel room desk and, due to lack of space, one of the two beds in the room. 13 had her right leg in a cast, resting on a small stool underneath the desk, and a pair of crutches leaning against the wall close by. 44 was chewing on a sandwich, not unlike many of the dozens of students and staff eating lunch that he and his partner had been watching for the past several uneventful hours.

"Max, 99," 13 said, pressing gently onto the minute earpiece on her left ear while watching the subjects of her sentence walking down the hallway, "why are you heading _away_ from Katten's room? You need to stay nearby, damn it!"

"It's okay, Brianna," 99 replied as she and Max rounded a corner. "Do you honestly think Katten is going to do something stupid to give himself away at a time like this?"

"You never know, he might," 13 said. "That's why you have to be ready for it by keeping a close distance."

"You've got him under constant surveillance! It's not like we're screwed if he should step out of the classroom!"

Perhaps having run out of things to complain about, 13 turned to 44 and asked, "Can we change the music or something? I'm getting tired of listening to Coldplay."

"I thought you liked Coldplay," 44 said.

"I do, but they're throwing off my concentration. We need something without lyrics, something instrumental. You know, film score or muzak or something."

"Like hell we're listening to muzak."

"Would you rather we put on something like Pantera or Slayer? Would _that_ help you concentrate, 44?"

"Hey, I _like_ Pantera," 44 said in a nasally whine.

"I was kidding." She returned her gaze to the computer screen in front of her, then, a second later, she turned back to face 44 with a raised eyebrow. "_You_ listen to Pantera?"

"I'll listen to whatever I want."

"But you…_you_ listen to Pantera?" She laughed.

"_So?_" 44 said with a nervous shrug.

"_Why?_" 13 laughed louder and harder this time.

"What's so funny?" Max could be heard saying from the high school.

"Did you know 44 listens to Pantera?"

"He what?" 99 chimed in.

"You heard right," 13 said, nodding even though the other two agents couldn't see her do so. "44 gets his kicks from the cowboys from hell."

"Can we drop this?" 44 said.

13 continued to giggle, but upon examining the screen next, she saw a boy dressed in a polo shirt and with glasses over his eyes looking straight into one of the cameras, picking at it with his fingers. "_Shit_," 13 said. "Max, Liz, drop what you're doing and get moving _right now_. We just got made. _Shit!_"

"By who? Where?" 99 said.

"Camera 27," 44 said, speaking into his earpiece.

"Huh?" Max replied.

"_The…the camera on the outside wall of the cafeteria!_" 13 said. "_Some kid, Four-eyes, he just found it! Which one of you idiots put it there?_"

"I did," 99 answered.

"Why am I not surprised?" Glancing at the screen, 13 and 44 both saw Max and 99 were still eating lunch, albeit abnormally quickly, on the front lawn of the school, near dozens of other staff and the grove where Katten's plants were, well, planted. "_For god's sakes, you two, move your asses!_"

"_We're going, we're going!_" Max and 99 said simultaneously, and a relieved 13 sighed once she confirmed that they were, in fact, doing that.

* * *

"Oh, _shit_," Claire mumbled in the middle of the conversation she'd been having with the others about Rusty's upcoming date with Terra. "Guys," she said to call them to her attention, even though the unexpected cursing had for the most part already taken care of that, "I just realized no one ever went back inside to tell Kent anything."

"Well, that was the idea," John said. "Holly decided not to go, so there was nothing _to_ tell."

"No," Claire said. "I should've gone back there and _told_ him the talk was being called off." Putting one hand on her forehead, she sighed and said, "I feel like such an ass."

"Maybe he's still back there," Holly said. "Maybe you can still tell him, apologize."

"Or maybe _you_ can," Rusty added, pointing to Holly.

Claire stood up from her place on the top step and hurried down the first hallway and their lockers to greet Kent, but alas, by the time she got to the second, longer hallway just outside of the drama room, he was gone, and with him, the opportunity to make immediate and therefore relatively painless, guilt-free amends. She walked back up to her friends and told them, "He's gone. I'm screwed."

"Hey, it wasn't your fault," Terra said.

"No, Terra," Claire said, "it _was_, and because I was stupid enough to forget about him, now he's going to go home feeling terrible and that means _I'm _going to go home feeling even _more_ terrible."

"Anyone got any trash?" Holly said, crunching up her prematurely worn-out paper lunch bag and standing up with one hand open wide. As she looked from the trash can some twenty feet away to the friends she was looking down on, she remarked, "As long as I'm headed over there…" Everyone shook their heads, and Holly nodded, beginning to make her way down the steps. While walking, she turned around, looked up at a distressed Claire, and attempted to calm her down: "Listen, Claire, I know you were wrong to treat Kent the way you did, but _aah!_" Mid-sentence, she was run over by a familiar man dressed in a trench coat.

"_You son of a bitch!_" Claire yelled.

As Holly and Max fell down onto the concrete together, Claire and soon many other surrounded them to help, among them Liz.

"_Sorry!_" Max said to Holly, swiftly getting back on his feet thanks to Liz. "_I'm really sorry about that! Sorry!_" And with that, they were off, heading towards the cafeteria and the eastern end of the school.

"What the…?" Holly said while lying on the ground on all fours when she saw a minute metal device sitting on the ground not far from her face. She extended her hand, picked up the object, and put it close to her ear, because she could've sworn she heard a voice coming out of it.

"_Max? Hello?_" the female voice on the other end said, her tone fraught with tension, worry, and anger all at once. "_Can you hear me?_"

"Who is this?" Holly said, speaking into the device while Claire led her back towards the group on the steps.

"_What? You tell me!_"

"This is Holly. Who is this?"

"_Shit!_" On this mysterious person's end, one thing was heard furiously pounding against another thing. She sounded pissed, and for good reason.

Just before making it back to the normalcy of the stairway, with a small bruise on her cheek and a few scrapes on her hands, Holly's head made a quick turn in the other direction, after which she told her friends, "_Be right back!_" and ran off after Max and Liz.

* * *

"I'm sorry things didn't work out with Holly today," Tom said to the tall boy standing behind him, dressed in his usual animal T-shirt (an eagle today) and cargo pants while Tom himself slowly pulled out the camera in the plaster wall with the aid of one of the new school year's equally fresh new pencils from his backpack.

Kent sighed, his arms crossed in self-loathing and disappointment. "It's all right," he lied. "It was her decision not to show, Tom. If she's happy, I should be happy, too." There was a pause during which neither of them said anything, but Kent then made a subject change, probably in an attempt to lighten the mood. (Relatively speaking.) "Tom, if there are cameras in our schools, watching everybody's every move, relationships should probably be the least of our worries."

"Got it!" Tom said, holding the miniature camera between his thumb and index fingers and displaying it to Kent. "To think, if Jessie hadn't removed that flier, we never would've known this was under it."

"Wouldn't you have_ noticed_ this was on the wall when you were putting up the flier this morning?"

"You'd think, but apparently not," Tom said as he studied all sides of the camera and its visible parts. "Well, the way I see it, it's either very good or very bad that we found this thing."

"_Look out!_" somebody shouted to the west, causing both Tom and Kent to look that way.

Max, Mr. Katten's trench-coated assistant, was running at high speed towards them. "_Drop that camera!_" he shouted.

"Uh…" Tom said. He turned to Kent for some kind of advice.

"Run?" Kent said.

Tom nodded. "_This was very bad._" With the gate to exit the school only a short distance away, he made a run for it, and Max was gaining quickly.

* * *

Holly trailed not far behind Liz, but upon reaching the fairly narrow passageway between the cafeteria and the two-story railing parallel to the three-story 7000 (math and foreign language) building directly across, a decent crowd of nondescript (if you weren't running, that is) people had already formed, and in the rush, Holly tripped on somebody's foot.

She landed in a boy's long, slender arms before she had the chance to slam her face onto the ground. She smiled as she turned to look up at his face, but that smile became a terrified stare, an expression that was reflected right back at her on his face, when she realized she'd just landed in Kent's arms.

"I…uh…" she began, but suddenly she was mowed down onto the ground by another familiar face: Josh's little sister Mila.

"_Outta my way!_" she screamed, and with that high-pitched, high-decibel voice of hers, she soon got her way as she, for some reason, chased after Max and Liz as well.

"_I've got to go_," Holly said, rising up from her involuntary sitting of a position without looking back at Kent (regrettably?) to follow the others involved in the chase. She had Max's earpiece, and regardless of his actual intentions, damned if she wasn't going to do her best to get it back to him.


	19. Made Worse

Max chased Tom east across Community Avenue, overlooking the elementary school to the south and heading towards the main street of La Crescenta Avenue. Tom unfortunately had the advantage of being a decade younger than Max, and while it wasn't as though the latter was a senior citizen or anything, you'd think a government agent who routinely exercises and is required to eat healthy would have some of the upper hand in a situation like this—but apparently not.

After several hundred feet, Tom reached the intersection, completely bypassing not one, but two gates (albeit locked ones) leading into the elementary school. Max watched as the boy frantically (and foolishly) pushed the button for the traffic light, pleading, "_Come on, come on…!_"

This stop gave Max enough time to catch up. When he was at a reasonable distance, he jumped, but Tom noticed and leapt out of the way before the flying Max was able to grab hold of him, and the latter instead fell hard onto the concrete sidewalk.

"_Max!_" 99 shouted.

As Max looked up, he was forced to make the split decision of turning back, in her direction, or alternatively in Tom's direction, down the hill and past the front lawn and auditorium entrance of the elementary school, ignoring a newly changed green light across the street. But in his looking up, Max realized that pedestrians—they were few, but there they were—on the surrounding streets were dialing and talking on their cell phones, in all likelihood to the police.

"Oh, shit," Max sighed.

Just as 99 reached him, Max leaped to his feet and resumed chasing after Tom.

"_Max, wait!_" 99 screamed, continuing to follow him. "_Brianna says wait!_"

"Who's Brianna?" Holly asked, herself not far behind 99.

"_Not talking to you_," 99 said.

After that exchange had finished, the voices of the three girls trailing behind Max faded into the noise of midday suburbia, and he returned his full attention to Tom, who had just reached the end of the block and was standing in the middle of the street, waving his arms up over his head.

Before Max could reach the boy, the car he'd been hailing reached the intersection, and Tom jumped out of the way such that he was on one side of the generic blue sedan and Max was on other.

"_Get in!_" the man in the driver's seat said, and he began driving even as the passenger door was still being opened so Tom could get inside.

"_Freeze!_" Max shouted, pulling his pistol out from inside his trench coat so fast he almost ended up throwing it off to the side. But luckily that didn't happen, and Tom raised his arms in surrender (and the car sped away) when he saw the gun being pointed at him. In one of those Max saw the camera the kid had stolen.

"_I knew it!_" Mila said.

Max turned around (without moving the arm holding the gun) to look at the three girls approaching him, and then faced Tom again.

"Max, let's think about this," 99 said calmly.

"We're standing in the middle of the road," Tom said.

"Yeah, we should move," Max nodded. "This is dangerous."

"As if pointing a _gun_ at my ex-boyfriend's best friend _isn't_?!" Holly said.

"But it's _more_ dangerous in the street." Max lifted his other hand and motioned Tom to follow him as he backed away onto the sidewalk. "Slowly, now."

"You're going to jail," Mila said with an I-told-you-so attitude.

"I'm not going to jail."

"My bad," she replied. "_Prison_."

"Can you just the gun down please?" Tom asked as he stepped onto the sidewalk beside Max and the girls. He looked over at the latter group and said, "Hi, Holly. Hi, Mila."

"Hi, Tom," Mila said, apparently fighting a laugh as she handled the situation with sarcasm. "How are things?"

"In a word? _Tense_."

"Do _you_ have a gun?" Mila said suddenly to 99. "Who are you assholes working for?"

"_Don't tell her anything!_" Max said.

"I won't," 99 reassured him. "She's not a cop. And on that note, Max, the police are probably—" on their way, as it turned out, when a loud siren interrupted her mid-sentence. "Well, there you go," she sighed.

"I hope you're both ready to be ass-raped," Mila said.

"As long as it's by each other, I think we'll be fine," Max told her. This statement was met with shock (particularly from 99), at which point he told them, "I'm just trying to lighten the mood here, guys."

"You're pointing a gun at a sixteen-year-old kid's face," 99 said.

"_Fifteen_," Tom said under his breath.

Three police cars pulled up on the side of the road, and the officers inside two of them then did as Max had done, but with much more foreword notice, and drew their guns to aim at Max. The girls ran off to the side near the third police car and a small crowd that begun to watch the spectacle.

"_Put the gun down, man_," an attractive brown-haired, blue-eyed officer in his forties who looked an awful lot like Tom Cruise demanded of Max. "Or we _will_ fire…. It's going to be okay, Tom." How did the officer know who the boy was? Max wondered.

"If I give you the camera," Tom said, lowering one arm to offer it to Max, "do you promise not to shoot?"

"You give him the camera, he drops the gun, we take the gun _and_ the camera…." the officer said. "Sounds like a fair trade to me."

"I don't _really_ want to hurt him," Max explained to the police. "I just want our camera back."

"_Our_ camera?" The officer turned to his colleagues and said, "Looks like it's going to be a fun day at the station today, boys."

Max turned to 99, who was slowly shaking her head in shame, as casually as possible, in recognition of his mistake of an utterance.

"Do we have a deal?" the head officer said.

Obviously, taking the aforementioned deal was the best idea, but Max was afraid of how much it would cost the success of the mission—assuming the mission would even be able to resume afterward—to be interrogated by the boys in blue. Sure, both the police and the secret agents wanted what was best for the safety of the country, but putting the two in conflict like they were now was never good. But on the other hand, did they really _need_ that one camera _that_ badly?

With a sigh, Max bent down on his knees and set the gun down on the concrete, and the police rushed over to help Tom and to arrest the one who'd had him at gunpoint.

As the cuffs were being placed around his wrists, Max saw 13 and 44's white van waiting for him and 99 across the street. He could barely make out 13's face through the window, but she was probably angry. Not nearly as angry as the Chief was going to be once he found out, though.

On the other side, Max watched 99, Holly, and Mila also being taken into custody, likely for questioning. That's when Max realized his earpiece, his contact to the other two agents, had fallen out of his ear when he'd crashed into Holly back at the high school. Had she picked it up after the incident? If she had, there was little doubt she would turn that into the police as well. 13 and 44 would deactivate it, but even empty guns can smoke. That meant the police would now have Max's gun, his earpiece, _and_ the camera Tom had found, not to mention all the things a search of his person would find. CONTROL was about to lose control.

This was turning out to be a very bad day.


	20. Interrogation

"So, Maxwell Smart," the Tom Cruise look-alike officer said, examining Max's ID and wallet while he circled an uncomfortably seated Max inside an interrogation room downtown at the Glendale Police Department's main station. "If that _is_ your real name…"

"It is," Max nodded. That was probably a bad thing for a CONTROL agent to say, but then again, it was probably a bad thing that CONTROL had him use his real name on this assignment in the first place.

"Well, Max, I'm Officer Sam Greene, and you're in some trouble."

"I have to go to the bathroom."

"You're not going anywhere."

"I know, officer, that's what I meant."

"You're probably wondering what those kids said about you."

"I am," Max said, gulping to ready himself for this information.

"First, we talked to that nasal-voiced brunette, Mila Goldsworthy. She didn't have much to say, except that she's been suspicious of you ever since she first saw you. Working as a teacher's assistant at the high school, Max? Or is that just a cover for the criminal activity she seems to think you're into?" Greene made eye contact with Max, opening them wide as if he expected to fill the gaps between the lids with a confession of some sort. "Nothing to say?"

"I'm not a criminal, sir."

"Next we spoke to Holly Snow," Greene continued, taking a seat opposite Max. "Did you know she was Australian?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"So you're paying attention, then? Good. Anyway, she picked up _this_," Greene said, pulling Max's earpiece, stored safely inside a tiny plastic Ziploc bag, out of his pocket and placing it on the table in between them. "When you ran into her, Max, you not only gave us a witness, you gave us some evidence. Evidence that just might support Mila's belief—unless you have a better explanation…" Greene paused for a moment, but Max was still apprehensive to say anything beyond a quick quip, anything that might land his ass in jail. "You don't?"

"What is it?" Max said.

"You tell me."

"It's a hearing aid."

"A hearing aid? Wow, that's some hearing aid you got there, Max. What kind of hearing aid talks back to you?"

"Oh."

"Who's Brianna?"

"Ex-girlfriend," Max shrugged.

"Does your wife know about her?"

"We're colleagues. It's cool."

"And what kind of work are you in, if you're not a teacher's assistant?"

"I—we sell greeting cards."

"And do you have to use your gun often when you're trying to sell those?"

"It's a risky business."

"Watch it, pal," Greene said, pointing an index finger at Max. "As for Thomas Fraser, he happens to be a close personal friend of my daughter. And not only did he give us this camera," Greene said as he placed that item, in its own plastic bag, on the table in front of Max, "he also gave us something we can definitely hold you on: you pointed your gun at him."

Max let out a sigh as he stared at the bags of evidence. He was doomed now.

"For now, you're under arrest for creating a public disturbance."

"Well, that sucks."

"Maybe for you," Greene continued. "I get a nice paycheck out of it."

"Since when do cops get _nice_ paychecks?"

"You have a choice, though, Max. Tell us who Brianna and Elizabeth and whoever else you're here with works for, and we can take you _all_ in, but _you'll_ get a lighter sentence out of it."

"I can't do that. I'm loyal to my team, officer."

"Then I'm afraid it's going to be a long night for you."

* * *

"So, Holly," Tom said, finally breaking the silence he'd been sharing uncomfortably with the three women involved in today's debacle. The four of them had been sitting in the lobby of the police station for almost an hour, engaging in one interview after another with the officers. "Forgive me for asking, but…well, why did you walk away from your talk with Kent today?"

Holly sighed.

"Ex-boyfriend?" Mila asked.

Holly nodded.

"Was he cute?"

Holly shot a warning glance to her right at Mila upon hearing this question, but nevertheless answered it with a wavy motion of her hand.

"Is that why you broke up with him?"

"What makes you think _I_ broke up with _him_?"

"Look at you," Mila replied. "What kind of jerk would want to put a frown on that pretty face?"

"You're giving her _way_ too much credit there, Mila," Tom said.

"_Hey!_" Holly gasped.

"What? You're not perfect." Turning to Mila, he corrected her: "You can't place _all_ the blame on the guy, you know."

"You're not perfect, either, Tom," Holly said. "In fact, I think you're just a little bit self-righteous. You act like you're the kind of boyfriend every guy should aspire to be, but if that were true, don't you think Oriel would have put out by now?"

"Ouch," Mila said. She turned to Holly and added, "I'm sure it's not entirely his fault, though. I mean, look at him. He didn't exactly get the best set of genes from his parents, did he?"

"Ouch," Holly said as she returned to face Tom at her left.

"What did I ever do you two?" Tom said. "I was just trying to make a point! And you still haven't answered my question, Holly."

"Don't try to change the subject."

"_You're_ the one who changed the subject _first_!"

The arguing teens heard 99 grumble and bury her face in her hand, but otherwise continued to ignore her.

"Mila, all I'm saying is, I think it would be in your favor to _not_ act like you girls are always the victim. Especially considering the fact that you are _rapidly_ becoming the other woman."

"What _other_ woman?" Mila said with a loud gasp and a scoff.

"You know what I mean. You're breaking Rick and Iris apart."

"Maybe that's a good thing."

"Is that an admission of guilt?"

"Nothing's _happened_, Tom! We're just friends!"

"Not for long."

"You're wrong about us."

"Not for long."

Realizing that the talk with Mila was going nowhere, Tom turned to the person he was originally speaking with, and Holly looked back at him with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. The reasons for this were clear, so he somewhat skirted away from his original topic to ask her something he knew would catch her off guard. "Holly, on Rick's behalf, I'd like to invite you to his birthday party this Saturday night."

At first, Tom thought he'd failed when she replied dryly, albeit truthfully, that "Someone should remind that boy that he's not a pimp." But beyond that, Holly didn't question the bait she'd just taken. "But other than that, sure, I'll go," she shrugged.

"The theme is sports," Tom added. "Support your favorite teams. Come wearing their merchandise."

"In that case, go Padres," Holly said, raising her arm in mock pride, though the support for said team was real. "What should I get him?"

"I'm sure whatever you think is right will be fine."

"So, some old _Hustler_ magazines and a box of Kleenex?"

"Sounds reasonable."

"I'm sure he won't be needing that stuff before too long, Holly," Mila said.

"Would you like a shovel, kid?" 99 interrupted, her sudden intrusion coming at a sufficient moment to make Mila, the "kid" she was referring to, jump.

"For what?" she said. "It's not _my_ birthday that's being celebrated!"

"For that hole you're digging."

"I don't get it," Mila said, looking to Tom and Holly for any help they might provide.

"You're walking the line."

"Is this about me and Rick?" Mila said with a sneer.

"Oh, brother," 99 said. "By the time you realize what's going on, it's going to be too late."

"I'm not listening to you," Mila said, turning her head away from everyone else. "You're a criminal."

"I'm trying to _help_ you."

"She speaks the truth," Tom added.

"Not so fast," 99 continued. As she pointed a finger at Tom and Holly, she explained: "You're trying to set her up with her ex-boyfriend at the party, aren't you?"

The fact that his plan was rather poorly veiled to begin with notwithstanding, Tom was shocked that he'd been made, his setup compromised, but he didn't have time to react, nor did Holly, because that's when the door to the interrogation rooms opened and Officer Greene reappeared. "All right," Greene told them, "you're all free to go now."

"Where's Max?" 99 asked.

"For the night," Greene said with a knowingly dramatic pause, "county lockup."

"_What?_"

"Sounds reasonable," Tom remarked.

99 rebuffed this comment with a stern look in Tom's direction, but quickly returned to Greene and tried to reason with him to not let this happen. "But—he's the _face_ of our greeting card company!" A compelling argument if ever there was one, but alas, no dice. "Without him, we're just…_faceless_!"

"But free," Holly said while she and Mila stood up. "Need a ride, Tom? I can call my Dad to come pick us up."

"And take us back to school," Mila added. "Which is another way of saying we are totally _not_ free anymore."

"Grow up," Tom said. As he looked at his watch, he explained. "It's past two. Sixth period. We've got less than an hour left, and that's not even factoring in the drive back. We are _out_ of there."

"Good," Holly said. "I'm really not growing fond of sixth period chemistry."


	21. Complication

"Nice work, genius," 13 said. She kicked the chair at the desk in her and 44's motel room with her uninjured foot, making 44 and 99 jump. "This is _just_ what we need."

"I don't know why you're mad," 99 replied.

"It might have something to do with the fact that we're now _one man short_!"

"You should be thanking him, 13."

"Oh, yeah, 99," 13 grumbled, "Max _totally_ deserves a conjugal visit for this one."

"He didn't give us up. That's a positive, isn't it?"

"Hardly," 13 began. "Think about it. Dozens of people saw you two. Katten definitely knows something's up, which means even if he _doesn't_ release you from duty as his T.A., he's still going to be suspicious about your every move."

"…That _is_ pretty bad," 44 added.

"Well, it could be worse," 99 said.

"I know what you're going to say," 13 said, placing her hands on her hips and turning her back to the others as she began to pace around the room. "'Max may be in prison, but at least KAOS doesn't have him, right?"

"Well…"

"_Wrong!_ The whole point of being a secret agent is the _secrecy_, goddamn it! And now, thanks the stunt you and Max pulled today, even if the rest of this town doesn't know it, the KAOS agents working behind Katten almost certainly do. Our whole cover's blown. Mission _over_! _Shit!_"

"What do you mean, _me and Max_? We're a _team_! All four of us! We're all in this _together_!"

"How touching."

"Actually, it is," 44 added. 13 shot him a nasty look, and he nodded and shut himself up.

"Brianna," 99 said, "don't try to pin this all on me! I don't care if you have a grudge against me just because Max and I—"

"And _I_ don't care if you _are_. I care about getting the job done! Who the hell cares who Max is sleeping with when national security is at stake?"

"We're not sleeping together."

"Well, that's at least _some_ good news!"

"Look," 99 continued, "the best way to get through this is to just be calm and rational. We need to stop focusing on the negatives and start thinking about what to do next. So where are we now?"

"What, are you an idiot?"

"No, damn it, it's a rhetorical question…"

"Max is in jail for the night," 44 said, "awaiting prosecution for what they perceived as a crime and not the prevention of such, which is what it _really_ was. Everyone in the community is now going to be suspicious of us if they weren't already, and the KAOS agents in the area, none of whom we've identified even we had seen them, know where Max is being held."

"Which means they'll be coming for him," 99 finished. "To kill him. _To kill him!_ Guys, we have to save him!"

"You mean, break into the police station and retrieve him," 44 said, halfway between question and statement. 99 nodded. "Yeah, that'll do wonders for our reputation."

"Well, I'm up for it." 99 looked at 13 and said, "Sometimes you have to break the law to uphold it, right?"

13 shrugged. "Sure. Why not?"

"Tell me you guys aren't _seriously_ considering doing this?" 44 said, his hands together as though he were begging. "_Come on!_ We've risked enough as it is!"

"You have a better plan?"

"_Yeah!_ Lay low! You said so yourself, the point of our job is the _secrecy_!"

"Maybe," 99 said. "But the way I see it, sooner or later we're finally going to come face to face with KAOS. When that happens, nobody's going to want to give up easily, and we're going to have an _actual_ fight on our hands, not more of the pussyfooting we've been doing since we got here. And obviously, whenever there's a fight, it's going to be hard to keep secret."

"Might as well get it over with," 13 added. "Besides, we've done crazier things."

"Hong Kong?" 99 asked.

"_Hong Kong,_" 13 and 44 said in unison.


End file.
